A Glad Day by Lisalu
by Not Lisalu
Summary: The best DBZ ff ever written. I posted it on here because too many fans have never read it, but it's by no means mine. A much better author wrote it.
1. Chapter 1

**READ FIRST: **I am NOT Lisalu. She disappeared from the DBZ fandom about a decade ago, and I have no claim to this fic. I'm just posting it here because it's a masterpiece and deserve to be read. I'm not doing it to get viewers, because I'm never using this account for anything else. Flame me, whatever, I won't be ever signing in to read the messages and reviews. I just want people to read this – spread the word!

**Original story starts HERE: **

**DISCLAIMER: **I DON'T OWN DBZ OR ANY CHARACTER OF THE SAME. I'M NOT RECEIVING ANY MONEY FROM THE WRITING OF THIS PIECE OF FAN FICTION.

**WARNING: **ALL YE UNDER 18 GO AWAY NOW! This fic contains violence, adult themes, sex, and profanity. It is not my usual romantic drama/adventure, and has some very dark, disturbing imagery and themes related to rape. If this is not your thing, don't read it.

**FORWARD:** This is a WHAT IF scenario that Toshiba and I discussed initially, and from those conversations grew this dark, dark story. I've been accused, on occasion, of having a very evil imagination. I may have outdone myself here. For all those who enjoy the often-used theme of "Bulma is taken to Vegita-sei as a slave and catches the eye of the Saiyan no Ouji", here's my version of the tale.

**A GLAD DAY**  
By: Lisalu

**CHAPTER I**

Vegita woke as a shaft of the orange light of dawn fell across his eyes, feeling the warmth of the soft body curled against his. His hands roaming the rounded curves and delicate silk of his woman's cream-colored skin, his mouth finding the hollow of her throat, tasting the sweet light sheen of her sweat. Vegita-sei was far more hot and humid than the world of her birth, and she always seemed to be covered in a shimmer of faint perspiration, even when her body was at rest. It made her taste all the better, he thought, grinning sleepily. She roused at the feel of his hands moving over her, tensing like a trapped game animal for a second or two. After more than three years in his bed, she still woke with a start some days, with fear and cringing terror flitting briefly across that beautiful face, before her mind righted itself to the present. Then she smiled that enigmatic smile, lips curling wickedly, and wrapped her arms around him, accepting him eagerly, and with joy. He went into her, diving inside that warm inner embrace that always, no matter how many times he had her, laid his pride and self-control to waste, and she moved beneath him, legs entwined around him, making soft, bird-like noises in his ear. He moved within her, slowly at first, then harder and faster, then lost to all control and any semblance of thought, taking her in a rage of rising need that was almost a madness, battering into her until her soft gasps rose to cries of something that was an intoxicating mix of pleasure and pain. He came inside her with a bitten-back cry, every nerve and synapse in his body and brain washed in a rolling wave of fire that never failed to bring him to some terrifying precipice of feeling. He had never wanted to give a name for what she made him feel for her. It was so powerful and unnatural in its dependence on her, it was all he could do not to snap her neck sometimes when control finally reasserted itself. Because of the power she had over him in simply being. He lay above her and inside her, nuzzling her breasts and throat, shaking like a yearling tree in a storm. No control whatsoever…

If he had any where she was concerned, he _would_ have killed her for exerting such a mind-numbing influence over him. She was a liability in many other ways, he thought, stroking her face, feeling her heart still pounding beneath his, her breath slowing to little catches of air in her chest. She was helpless and frail and utterly defenseless in every way that really mattered. And he valued her. Greatly. So much it terrified him sometimes. Which meant she could be used against him by an enemy. But he would not lose her, or see her slain, by his hand or any other's. In moments when he was completely honest with himself, he knew he would lose his mind if someone took her from him, stole her, threatened her in any way. Lose all objectivity and the cold fighting stillness that he had worked all his life to achieve in battle. The wild rages and tantrums of his boyhood had been channeled into purposefulness and direction in manhood, but there were still times when he barely held them in check. And there were triggers that always seemed to break through his control. His Chikyuu woman was one such trigger. The strongest and, perhaps the most deadly, because she seemed to pierce his breastbone and the heart that lay beneath each time he touched her. Each time his eyes fell on her.

A prince, a crown prince of the mightiest empire the galaxy had yet known, had enemies on every side, and no truly trusted friends. And anything in his life that he…treasured was a danger to him. It would not have mattered so much had no one known of his regard for a simple pleasure slave. Had no one known…

But, because of the manner in which he had gained ownership of her, everyone in the Capital knew. It had been a subject of gossip and speculation and more than a little outrage in his father's court. It was also been the subject of his father's extreme displeasure of late. Not displeasure that the crown prince of the Saiyan Empire had a courtesan he doted on. His father, he knew, had taken and kept many mistresses in his day, both slaves and free concubines. But as his father had told him sternly less than a week ago, the Saiyan no Ou had always put them aside after an appropriate amount of time, so as not to seem entranced with his woman in an unseemly fashion. So as not to put his mistress in danger, if he held a measure of affection for her. If she had pleased him greatly, she would be given wealth and freedom when he cast her off. This was just and proper.

But, his father had told him with disdainful anger, a crown prince of the Empire did _not_ keep the same mistress for three solid years and keep to her bed alone as faithfully as if she were his moonbound bride. And more, he did _not _jeopardize the reputation of the throne and the honor of the royal house for the sake of one foolish wench. Again, Ottoussama harping on the specter of how he had attained her in the first place. His father had never forgotten, nor truly forgiven him that. He knew it had damaged the trust his warriors held for him as prince, though not irreparably. He also knew that the only way to regain that trust completely, the only way his father would ever forgive him for what he had done, would be if he put his woman down. He propped up on both elbows above her, brushing her lips. The time had come, his father had told him during that last tense interview, to be shed of her. Before the whispers of the Elite, which had apparently reached the King's ear through his army of informants around the Capital, turned to mockery. A Prince could survive a scandal easily enough if he were strong and charismatic. But he could not so easily rise above becoming a laughing stock.

"See to her, boy." Ottoussama had said flatly. "Quick and painless, while she sleeps."

He should have felt nothing more searing than supreme annoyance at his father having butted into his private affairs once again. He should have grumbled and cursed Ottoussama angrily for a few days, then done the deed. But his chest and the heart inside begin to cinch up at the mere thought of not having her, of never holding her again, of her lying in this bed, cold and lifeless, dead by is hand.

He shook his head irritably. Nothing would come to a head today between himself and his father in this matter. Nor any time soon. The throne had and would have far too many matters to attend to in the next months for Ottoussama to take time out to bitch at him about such a relatively minor issue. Today-

"Today will be a glad day," he murmured aloud.

"Yes," she agreed softly. "I heard the ship engines all night landing in the space port. Everyone who is anyone in the Empire will be here today for your father's centennial."

He grunted at the mention of his father. She had no idea how much thought his father had given her and the subject of her death. It had been a source of constant friction between the king and his heir for three years now. "Do not go into the city today," he said without explanation. She nodded obediently, her blue eyes shadowed. Perhaps she knew or had heard more than he thought of her own situation.

"Can I go to medlab?" She asked quietly, one small hand stroking his face. "There are some things I need to take care of, and it should be deserted because of the festival."

He frowned, considering. "I will be back at sunset," he said finally. "See to it you return before I do."

Her eyes narrowed, lips curving minutely. "Oh? Do you have plans for me, Ouji-sama?" The soft hand caressing his cheek moved down his back and brushed the base of his tail, a taunting, light gesture. His arms tightened around her again, and he moved inside her, slowly, very slowly, and gentle. This time would be for her. There was an inexplicable sense of power in this, in giving her his body, in taking her the way she wanted him to, making her cry out in pleasure instead of pain. It was a skill he had learned almost too late, he thought in a kind of feverish, trembling ache of rising desire. And then he could no longer think at all.

When they finally collapsed together again, tangled and sweaty and straining for breath, he carried her to the bathing pool in the next room. The house slaves had drawn the bath at dawn, but the water was still more than warm. She sat behind him, bathing him in gentle sweeps with her sponge, the soft soothing lilt of the Chikyuu-jin song she was humming lulling him into a meditative thoughtfulness. He knew that melody she was humming, had heard her sing it before. When?

His eyes snapped open as he touched on the memory. She had been singing it the first time he had laid eyes on her. Three years ago, in the house of Raditz…

He had fought beside Raditz on a number of purging missions, before taking him officially into his royal squad, an honor no commoner's son had ever received as far as Vegita knew. He had taken an interest in the man because his low-born blood was so at odds with his uncommonly strong fighting power. And though the king and his old sensei Nappa had both informed him bluntly that common soldiers were unsuitable companions for a prince, he had been drawn to the man's honest forthright sense of honor and the simplicity in which he saw the world. It was a new thing to have a man at his side who neither knew nor cared for any of the intrigues of court. Who saw the arc of his life as all Saiyans should if they remained true to their basic nature-as a never-ending quest for the next battle, the next challenge to test a warrior's strength, the next chance to grow stronger. These things were pure and unsullied by greed or solicitude in Raditz. And the man had truly wanted nothing from his prince but to fight beside him. He was prince, Vegita had reasoned in the end, and would make his own rules, and take into his personal squad whosoever he chose.

It was just that lack of sophistication that had led Raditz to ask his Prince to sup at the hearth of his back country villa, as though the two of them were truly squad brothers and not master and servant. Nappa had gone into a rage, threatening the man's life and the lives of all his house for such presumption. But Nappa, Vegita had learned long ago, had a penchant for developing a raging hatred of anyone or anything that seemed to threaten his place at his Prince's side. Vegita himself found the invitation charming and intriguing. He had never dined in the house of a simple soldier. It was a chance to enjoy the man's company, and see a piece of the lifestyle of the common man, of only briefly. So, he accepted the invitation. And because he had done so, many things had changed.

Raditz' house was perched in the tiered mountains of Turrasht, in the wilds of the southern continent, hundreds of kilometers from the nearest city. It was simple and rustic, but surprisingly tasteful, sprawling across the grassy plain of a mesa that looked out on a breath-taking panorama of spired peaks. And the kitchen slaves were some form of genius savants, Vegita decided by the third course of the meal. Everything they brought to table was mouth-watering and exquisitely delicious. Even Nappa calmed and began to enjoy himself as the meal wore on, as the food and wine never stopped until everyone was sated and full. The conversation waxed late into the night, as the men sat around the hearth pit that was the heart of every Saiyan house, speaking of battles fought and won, as each man in turn told some tale of a war or battle from ages past.

"It is always a tale of some war from days gone by that we must tell now," Vegita murmured solemnly at some point in the evening, his head spinning pleasantly with too much wine. "There is no more galaxy left to conquer. There will be no more wars…" He frowned pensively.

Nappa grunted in response. "You were born late, Ouji-sama. In the days of your father's youth, there was battle on every side, and strong enemies who opposed Vegita-sei's rise. There was always a war to be fought. Now…purging rebellious systems that we have conquered already is not a fitting substitute. It makes me sad for young men such as yourselves, that you will never know the joy of all out battle. We have slain all our strongest foes…and that is not necessarily a good thing."

Raditz nodded. "We need true battle to survive as we are. Without it, we will slide into decadence within a few short generations. If we do not have it, we will not grow stronger. And we may be forced to change into something else in its absence."

"Change is a dangerous thing," Nappa rumbled, glaring at the younger man as though he had suggested high treason.

"The Tsiru-jin were strong," muttered one of Vegita's retainers. "Had they not all died untimely we would have fought them eventually."

"_That_ would have been a war to end all wars," Vegita said. "My Lord father says they were monstrously powerful. Raditz…you told me once you went to Tsiru-sei on a mission with your father five years ago, did you not?" He smirked. "Is it as barren of life as men say? Are there not one or two survivors of the race that we might hunt down and fight?"

Raditz shook his head sourly. "I have never in all my life had such a mind-bogglingly boring four days in my life as I had on that little expedition. My father asked me as a friend to accompany him on his 'scientific mission'." He said the word with distaste. "He got leave from your father to go and try to ferret out the cause of their over-night death. Bardock is a strange man. He thinks knowledge for its own sake may yield good things. If only to learn what mistake they may have made or what silent, unseen enemy might have killed the lizards in the space of a day, so that we do not repeat their folly. Or so that we may guard against that same enemy. Your father broke the quarantine around Tsiru-sei, and allowed our mission. It had been forty years that no one had dared to venture to the world to learn what actually happened. So we went. My father found the records of experiments one of their scientists had kept. A fellow named Hayull. He had been working on a project to make his people immortal, Bardock said. I don't know all the gritty science details of what was involved, but apparently, it was supposed to be a virus designed to make Tsiur-jin DNA not…fall apart as they age. That, my father said, is the reason living things grow old and die. But it back-fired on them. It made their cells replicate perfectly, without aging, for about twenty days. Then it began to tear them apart from the inside out as their immune system kicked in and caused it to mutate, and-" Raditz stopped, gazing around at the ring of blank faces. "Anyway…it killed them in just a few hours when it went bad. They all died coughing up their own hearts as their insides turned to liquid. A bad death for a race of warriors." There were rumbles of agreement from all around. And Vegita hid a grin at the relieved look on Raditz' face, as the quizzical looks the others had been giving him shifted, and their thoughts turned to the horror of dying such a helpless coward's death, felled by a virus. Bardock, Vegita suddenly realized, was not the only one in his line who bore an uncommonly quick mind. Raditz hid it well, but the man had understood the principals of everything he had just said, both the science and the medicine. Which was probably why his father had asked his help. It was widely held that a soldier of common birth need only know the basics of arithmetic and how to read. To learn more, to even express curiosity in things beyond that narrow scope, was presumptuous. And so the man hid his good mind from others, though he was possibly every bit the closet scholar his sire was. The fellow just kept on surprising him.

"It was, as I said before, a miserable four days," Raditz went on. "We were bound into Madrani bio-hazard suits day and night, couldn't even take them off to sleep. Even when my father and the medical slaves found that the virus would only affect Tsiru-jin, we still had to keep them on, and then we had three fucking weeks of quarantine before we could return home, being poked and prodded for blood samples by one of my father's weakling Madranis every three damn hours. And all we brought back from the entire 'mission' were a couple of Tsiru-jin corpses for the med slaves to study and a pile of medical notes!"

Someone snickered. "Your father must have owed you the hide off his back for that little favor!"

Raditz grinned then, and there was something distinctly odd about that expression. His face looked like a man half-fallen into one of his life's best memories as he spoke. "Oh, he made it up to me." He didn't elaborate any further. The night wore on, and the talk wound its way this way and that, on until dawn. Just as the first rays of light began to nudge over the western peaks of Turrasht, Raditz suddenly sat bolt upright in the chair he had been slowly falling asleep in, his eyes sharp and wide awake. He sprang out of his seat and left the hearth room through the great wooden doors that lead to the sheer cliffside of the mesa, with only a hurried, "Your pardon, Ouji-sama," as explanation.

But Vegita's curiosity had been sparked. He cast his senses along the rim of the small estate, and caught…something. The presence of someone moving outside the house, along the cliff's edges, the faint, soft sound of a female voice calling out, gentle and coaxing. Followed by an indignant squawk. A moment later, Raditz set down in the courtyard, carrying a wiggling bundle in his arms. Vegita watched silently, through the half-open doors that led from the hearth to the garden in the house's central courtyard that the house slaves had pushed ajar to let a light breeze trail through. Raditz set his burden on its feet and began to scold it. It was…

His heart caught in his throat, and he realized after a moment that he had forgotten to breathe. Oh gods, it was beautiful! He heard a faint growl of appreciation at his shoulder and saw that the others in his entourage had followed him and were looking out on the strange scene.

"…cannot even obey me in one simple thing for less than twelve hours!" Raditz was glaring down at the young woman before him, speaking in a hushed voice.

"He got out through the open window," the alien girl whispered, holding something to her breast closely, wrapped in a small blanket. Vegita narrowed his eyes, but could not see at this angle what sort of pet the girl was cradling. It sounded like a hop cat, a very young one. "I was going to wait to go look for him, but he must have gotten himself stuck on the cliffside. I couldn't just lie there listening to him cry for help. I-I had to go get him!"

Raditz glowered down at that porcelain face for a moment, before growling softly. "The fall would not have hurt him, you foolish little thing." His lips twitched, and he was rewarded for his leniency with a smile as warm and radiant as daybreak in high summer. And Vegita stood transfixed, as the tall warrior bent down and brushed a stray lock of that shimmering, exotic blue hair from his woman's face, touching his lips to hers. She smiled and silently vanished through a side door into another part of the house. A soft, growling chuckle from one of the other men caught his ears as he watched her go, and Raditz turned and saw his audience, his face reddening. He approached the other men, entering the hearth through the courtyard, closing the doors slowly behind him. He turned and regarded Vegita's amused face with a strange look of relief.

"That girl," Nappa said unkindly, "has the look of contraband, Raditz. Since when do common soldiers own a beauty like that without so much as a by your leave from their betters?"

Raditz, so normally unresponsive to the older nobleman's blatant dislike, turned on him slowly, his face hard. "A soldier has the right to any fruits of his own conquests, Nappa-san!"

"Where did you find her?" Vegita asked curiously. "I've not seen coloring like hers before."

"Nor will you again, Ouji-sama," Raditz answered slowly. He grinned faintly. "She's a gift from my father. I told you he more than made it up to me after that trip to Tsiru-sei." He drifted over to the hearth, sitting back in the chair he had vacated a moment before, and the others followed him, sensing there was a story here.

"About a month after we went to Tsiru-sei, my father and his squad went on a retrieval mission, to collect my younger brother Kakarott from his infant purge. Some of you may have heard part of this tale. Bardock found the world still full of life, and when he located Kakarott…The brat had been injured in his first days on Chikyuu, his wits scrambled by a blow to the head. He thought he was one of the natives!" Raditz shook his head in regret. "A great waste, my father said, because he had grown very, very strong for his age. Kakarott was about 13 standard years, I think. Anyway, Toussan put the brat down quickly and mercifully. The kindest thing for the poor little half wit really. And then he and his squad finished the boy's mission and purged the planet. But they took this girl alive. Toussan said she shot him with a gun of her own construction that put a hole clean through his shoulder, and he knew in that second she was a perfect gift for me. And her family had cared for Kakarott, taken him in as their own brat, I think. So, Toussan thought he owed her house something." Raditz took another deep sip of his canter of wine, and Vegita suddenly realized that the man was, in a very subdued way, more in his cups than he had ever seen him. And speaking of things he would never have told sober. "She was seventeen years old, and…like a wild thing when they brought her to me. And completely untouched. My father and all his squad are mated, so no one had ever laid hands on her before me…"

"She still seems only half-broken to me…" Nappa said thickly, inches from passing out in his chair. "Needs to be…taken in hand a bit more."

"Courtesan slaves are best when they are not broken," Raditz said coldly. "Otherwise it's like bedding a breathing doll. I like my women with life and spirit. It makes them more troublesome, but the…the end result is more than you can imagine." He took another full draught of wine, draining the cup, setting it down unsteadily. "I had the kitchen slaves prepare a meal, a very good meal, when Toussan brought her to me. She hadn't eaten in days. I sat and ate with her all evening, and listened to her talk, listened to her weep for her home and her kin. And kept pouring the wine. Then, I laid her down in front of the fire and…" He grinned faintly, his eyes growing heavy, his voice softer. "And I seduced her. Very slowly, and very gently. Took all night with it." Raditz' eyes slid shut, and he spoke the last words in a soft whisper that Vegita could barely hear above the snores of the other men. "She is the most precious thing I own, Ouji-sama…"

The sound of a soft voice, singing in a strange, lilting language, brought Vegita out of his light sleep an hour or two later. He rose, eyeing Raditz and Nappa's inert forms with more than a little envy, and picked his way over the sprawled bodies of the other men, following the sound of the music. It was coming from the courtyard, and as he pushed his way through the swinging hinged doors he was greeted with a soft gasp, as the young woman who had been pouring water on the bright flowers in the garden turned and met his eyes with a lack of fear that was amazing in a slave. But then, Raditz had spoiled her outrageously, from the sound of his tale. Looking at her again, Vegita didn't really blame him.

She was painted in cream and sea blue, those brazen eyes matching the azure of her hair. And she was utterly beautiful, even more so than he had thought from a distance of several meters. He approached her silently, eyes trailing over her, taking in every curve of body and detail of that lovely face, rising again to find those pale cheeks reddening, the blue eyes snapping with anger.

"Did you get an eyeful?" She asked waspishly, and for a few seconds, he could only stare at her in open-mouthed shock. That a slave would have the abject audacity to speak sharply to him! Then he grinned. Raditz hadn't been exaggerating when he said he didn't break his mistresses. Apparently the over-indulgent fool didn't believe in reigning them in at all. And she would have no idea who he was, other than another of her master's guests. His hand shot out, lightning fast, and caught her chin, holding her in place. She gasped, tensing with fear, and again fury, at his touch. He stepped closer still then, his free hand trailing through her soft, fine hair, savoring her scent. She smelled like the flowers around her.

"Take your hands off me, you son of a bitch," she hissed in his face, and he nearly laughed aloud. "You don't own me, and you're insulting your host's hospitality unforgivably to touch what isn't yours!"

"Raditz is my leigeman, woman," Vegita said amiably, drawing his hand down her pale face, seeing those brilliant eyes widen in realization. "He will not begrudge me the use of one of his slaves." A part of him knew, was screaming at him, that the woman was right, that he _was_ abusing Raditz' hospitality unforgivably to lay hands on his favorite without asking. But he couldn't seem to take his hands off of her, couldn't seem to even think straight as he brushed her breast lightly and saw, felt, an involuntary flash of terror laced with desire ripple through her.

She was going to be something exquisitely entertaining.

"You-you're the prince?" She whispered.

"I am Vegita," he murmured. "And you…" he smirked, stepping back from her, regaining some measure of control. "You are something that should not be hurried in an open-aired garden. I will do things properly." He turned and strode back into the hearth to find Raditz and the others groggily waking up. Raditz began to speak, and held his tongue suddenly, his eyes widening in shock. He could smell the woman on Vegita's clothes and hands probably.

"Ouji-sama-" He began. The bigger man's face seemed to have lost all its color.

"I will give you your pick of any twenty of the professional courtesans belonging to the royal house of Vegita-sei," Vegita told him, watching the other man's face begin to work in an odd way, watching Raditz swallow hard. "Sell her to me." It wasn't a request. Raditz swallowed again, and Vegita waited expectantly for the man to take his more than gracious offer. Then…

"I thank you, Ouji-sama…I am very flattered by your offer. But…I must refuse."

"You what?!" Nappa barked. "You back water bumpkin! You do not refuse your prince the least thing he-"

"I meant to say," Raditz went on hurriedly, "That I must refuse for the moment. I have-I have promised her to my friend Kyouka for a week. He-he saved my life on that purge of Corsaris that went so wrong, a few weeks ago. He has admired her for some time, and it is a matter of honor that I have given him my word he may borrow her. But, if I do not offend you, my Prince, I will give her to you with joy in one week's time."

"You do not offend, Raditz," Vegita said graciously. "Anticipation makes possession all the sweeter, as my father says. One week then."

"One week, Ouji-sama," Raditz had nodded in agreement. But something…something was wrong in the look of the man's eyes. And Nappa had seen it, too.

"He's utterly besotted with the little trollop," his old sensei told him bluntly during their flight back to the capital. "I do not put it past the fool to hide her away, and try to say she has died in some chance accident!"

Vegita eyed the older man thoughtfully. Nappa hated Raditz with little reason, it was true, but the odd, distant look in Raditz' eyes as they had taken their leave had given Vegita pause. The fact that he had declined an invitation to return to the capital with his prince for several days, pleading that his estate needed tending, was also unlike him. But Vegita had not been outside of his rights to ask for anything that the man owned. He was prince, and one day would be king, and all of the Saiyan Empire, and everyone and everything that lay within it were his to command. And anything that Raditz or any of his subjects owned was Vegita's by right if he wished it. Anything. It had been a test of the man's loyalty, perhaps, to ask of him the thing he valued above all his other possessions. But Raditz had shown that his devotion to his Prince lay above his love of anything he owned, and Vegita had never known the man to balk on his oath. "He has given me his word, Nappa. He will not break faith with me." And they spoke no more of it.

Then, four days later, the big man came to him at dusk, his eyes gleaming in the failing light with malicious delight, and Vegita knew before his old trainer even opened his mouth that he had been betrayed in his trust of Bardock's son.

"You look like a feline with a bird in its mouth, Sensei," Vegita said grimly. "Tell me what you have found."

"It is better if I show you, Ouji-sama," Nappa rumbled. "But we must be quick."

Vegita followed silently him to one of the more isolate space ports in the southern continent, a secondary over-flow base that received the excess shipments of imports from the capital's six landing bases. Ships, great cargo ships from all corners of the empire, littered the port. There was one stand out, sitting isolated on the western wing of launch pads, one small, fast Madrani ship, so stripped down it looked like a smuggler's skiff. And standing under the floodlights of that little ship, holding her little hop cat bundled under a wrap in her arms like a sack of precious gems, was Raditz' woman.

It all went horribly wrong then. Vegita watched Raditz come bolting out of the ship, his face a mask of panic, and knew that the man must have picked up his steadily rising Ki on his scouter. Vegita moved to the boarding ramp where Raditz stood in the space of a heartbeat, his energy soaring upward in rage. The bastard had been about to leave Vegita-sei, probably never to return! He had lied, deliberately putting Vegita off, so he could have the time to make good his escape with the woman!

Vegita did not even given Raditz the courtesy of a word. He had simply rammed his hand through the treacherous oath-breaker's chest, seizing the heart within, stopping it forever. And the woman-the woman was uttering a high keening wail, as though she had been the one killed, struggling like a mad thing in Nappa's arms. But she was not wailing for the loss of her man. Vegita turned his head just in time to see Nappa crush the life out of the thing the woman had been holding in her arms. It was not a hop cat. It was a child. A boy, less than a year old, with black, spiked Saiyan hair…and bright blue eyes.

Vegita turned around in the bath, and gathered the woman in his arms, pulling her before him, to slowly bathe her body, his face blank of any expression, thinking back on that scene. It had been ill done. The half-breed brat would have been put down, of course. There was no choice in the matter, even for a prince. But it didn't have to have its neck wrung right in front of her. He did not understand it, but he had seen this kind of thing countless times in the heat of a purge. Lesser races valued their young above their own lives, would hurl their bodies in the path of an on-coming blast to save their brats. She still dreamed about that, still woke screaming the boy's name, even after three years. If he could, he would raise Raditz from the dead and kill him again for letting the boy be born in the first place. For giving her that grief that would have had to come sooner or later, and had nearly broken her mind. He had beaten Nappa to the point of death, while the woman sat nearby, holding the baby's body, rocking it, singing to the child. Singing that same song she was humming now, he thought with a chill.

The first night in his summer palace, in the low, hilly islands off the cost of the capital, she sat like a doll, not responding or reacting to anything as his house slaves had bathed and prepared her for his arrival that evening. He had come to her early…and departed after a few moments in disgust, as she simply stood like a living body sapped of its soul by some succubus as he touched her. He deserted the island estate and a burning fury, tearing toward the mainland to train until dawn, beating his four strongest sparring partners to death in his rage, beating them even after they were dead. And when he saw Nappa again that morning, bleary-eyed and shaky from the regen tank, Vegita beat the man like a mongrel canid once again for the bad taste and stupidity of the act that had more than likely robbed the woman of her senses.

Then his father descended upon him. He had not been aware that the news of how he had stopped Raditz' defection had been received so poorly at court until his father advanced on him in a frothing rage in his private audience chamber.

"You have dishonored the royal house for the sake of a whore, boy! The man was a member a your personal squad! That is supposed to mean something, you back-stabbing little bastard! Do not tell me he went back on his word, or that he had sired a half-breed with the alien woman. Yes, his life would have been forfeit under law. But you should never have demanded of him what was his, knowing he prized it so highly. Who will trust you now, 'Ouji-sama?!' Who will trust or follow a king who would betray and slay his own squad brother for the sake of a bed slave?!"

"They will follow me because I am strong, Ottoussama," Vegita ground out. "Because I am the greatest warrior, the strongest our race has seen in a thousand years! I am strong, old man! Is it not the foundation of Saiyan law that the strong may take from the weak anything they desire?! Our people will fear me and obey, or they will die!"

"You are a brainless young fool if your mind cannot discern the difference between ruling with a hard hand and tyranny," Ottoussama said coldly. "Saiyans do not bend to the whip like lesser races. Who will you rule when your people are all dead by your hand, boy? Who will you rule when they dessert the tyrant they no longer have any respect for, and scatter to the four corners of the galaxy, tearing the Empire I have spent my life building to pieces?" His father shook his head in disgust. "You have your stolen prize now. They tell me she has lost her wits. She is useless to you now, unless you have a sick taste for bedding the walking dead that I do not know about. Put her down, and pay Raditz' father a blood price. Do it publicly, and the Empire will see that you have been young and hot-blooded, as young men are in their passions. But that you have regretted your actions, and become wiser for your folly. Do not challenge my will on this, boy. Not unless you are ready to rule in my stead."

Vegita stood for a long, bone-chilling moment, hands clenched in anger, fighting for control. He was not ready to be king. Did not wish to be king for many years to come. And he knew that if he went against his father's will in this, the King would force him into a confrontation that would end in a death match. A very short death match, that would leave Vegita holding the reigns of an Empire he had neither the seasoned years of experience nor the wish to rule right now. And so, slowly, he forced himself to relax, to let go of his fury. Even a crown prince, even a king, may not have all things as he desires, his father had told him more than once. It was a bitter lesson, but there was no help for it. He bowed his head in curt agreement, and went to see to Bardock's blood price.

Three days later, he flew back across the stretch of ocean, to the sanctuary of his island, nearly growling aloud in seething rage. The public blood price ceremony earlier that day had been the most humiliating several hours of his life. And Bardock…the low-born bastard had had the nerve to look him in the eye with a flat reproach that bordered on disgust! It was a look he would have cheerfully killed Bardock for had they not stood in the center of his father's great hall, with every eye in court fastened onto both of them. And the instant it was over, his father had suggested bluntly that it might be prudent if he absent himself from the Capital for a few months. And so, Vegita had left to return to his summer estate. And see to the mad girl's death. The last, pitiful bit of unfinished business in the entire sordid affair. And found, to his surprise, that she had come out of her stupor. With a vengeance.

The house slaves had prepared her for him days ago, as they prepared all unbroken bed slaves, by Silencing her. A simple, local muscle relaxant that worked on the vocal cords alone, Silencing the recipient. It made things far less noisy. Of course, she hadn't needed it until now. The instant he opened the door to her rooms, she attacked him, and he remembered Raditz' tale of how she'd fabricated a weapon that had put a hole through Bardock's Ki shield and his shoulder. She hit him with a jolt of some kind of electrical current, from a weapon cobbled together from the gutted appliances scattered about the room, that took him completely at unawares, and sent him to his knees. Then she jumped on him, brandishing a carving knife from the kitchens, slashing at his throat viciously. It was a rowdy little battle for all of one minute, just long enough for his senses to bounce back from the shock she'd given him. Then he caught her swiping arm in one firm hand, grinning at her in honest admiration, as her mouth moved, screaming silent curses at him, and pulled her to him.

And it was…Oh gods, it was sweeter than he could have ever imagined, especially in the invigorating wake of that little battle, as she fought him for each stroke he drove inside her, biting and clawing like a Saiyan woman in the grip of moonbound heat, and his heart had felt as though it was threatening to burst out of his chest at the end.

And after that, it became like an addiction, his need seeming to grow with each taste he had of her. He did not chain or bind her in any way, giving her the run of the island estate during the day, and it was always a surprise to see whether she would attack him with some new toy of her own making on his arrival, or whether she would have simply fled the grounds and the island. On one or two occasions, as the sweltering summer dragged on lazily, she actually managed to wound him with the ingenious, wicked little devices that had built over the course of the day from things as innocuous as the mechanized cookery of the kitchens and standing lamps. Little by little, as the weeks went by, she slowly stripped the entire estate bare of every construct more complex than a bread toaster in her tireless quest to defeat him. Each evening when he flew back from the Capital, the battle would be joined. Except, of course, on the days when he would find her fled. He began to enjoy the escape attempts and the hunts that followed a great deal, more than her ambushes in fact. But whatever game she chose to play, however long the warm-up bout dragged out each evening, he was always the victor in the end. In the end, he would always sate himself inside that silken-skinned body until the need for sleep overcame him, while she fought him until the last of her frail strength gave out. Week after week, drawn out through the months of that over-long summer, sidled by in this manner.

The end came the day he found her in a foundering sea skiff, seconds from being devoured alive by the razor-toothed sea predators that were encircling her sinking little ship. She gazed up at him, as he flew her back to the island, her face calm and reflective as she shivered against him, soaked to the skin. It was one of the few times since that first glimpse of her in Raditz' garden, that he'd seen her features in something other than a mask of fear, pain, or rage. And she was breath-taking. She fixed those enormous blue eyes on him, glittering with brimming tears like the sea beneath them. The first tears he'd seen her shed in several weeks. She raised her head then, and made some sort of gesture, mouthing a question. Why? Why hadn't he just let her die? He shook his head, holding her against his body a little more securely as he flew.

"I do not want you to die," he said gruffly, and one hand strayed, almost of its own will, to caress her face softly, brushing the damp blue locks from her face. She stared at him, her face a wash a mixed emotions, for a long moment. Then…she sighed against him, seeming to wilt. And he knew that the wrestling matches that had always accompanied their bed play were over. She had run a long, desperate race, but the cold fact was that if you rode a mount long enough, and hard enough each day, even the wildest of fillies would break to the bit in time. Though he suspected that the thing that had finally bent her to his will was not his constant hard use of her or her flagging spirit. It had been that one little spark of gentleness that defeated her in the end.

And he was right. When he lay her down on his bed, peeling of her soaking clothes, she did not fight him. And because of it, he took his time, laboring upon her body like a man crafting a precious work of art, doing all the things that he had been waiting to do to her once her will finally snapped. He used every skill, every trick he could remember, gleaned from years of instruction by the royal house's retainer of Maiyosh-jin courtesans, the best in the galaxy. He made her arch and strain and buck beneath him in silent screams of pleasure as she came over and over under his efforts.

And if he had found her to be an obsession before, she was a madness in his blood after that night, after she began to receive him willingly. Slowly, he began to realize on some unsympathetic level, why Raditz had done the things he had done. Even the child. A lesser man like Raditz had probably been so spell bound by this woman that he would deny her nothing-not even a half-blood son.

The summer wound its way down into fall finally, and still he gave no thought to returning to the Capital, to moving his household back to the Palace. Each day, during the last few months, he had flown into the great city, crossing the water, to attend to his duties and training. He had avoided all public appearances, avoided the company of his squad members and retainers, everyone. Slowly repairing the breach between himself and his father, slowly letting go of his anger toward Nappa. The big man had been a pitiful sight during those months of estrangement, having never been shut out of his Prince's service and companionship for any amount of time. Not since the day of Vegita's birth really. And when the truth was said, Nappa had only done what had to be done, though he had done it in his characteristically brutish and heavy-handed fashion. His old sensei's poorly veiled expression of grateful relief and affection when Vegita formally received him once again into his service, the familiar presence of the man's looming shadow hovering at his right shoulder once again, gave Vegita an odd feeling of warmth. If was as though something had been missing in those months he had turned his back on the big man. Something that had been steady and sure and ever-present his entire life. And in this, his father nodded his approval as they dined together that night.

"It is good that you have reinstated him," Ottoussama said firmly. "Your mother told me once, that on the day of her birth, her father set his young kinsman Nappa to attend her and guard her, knowing that she would soon be betrothed to the heir of Vegita-sei because of her extraordinarily high Ki at birth coupled with her noble blood. He was seven years old. And for over a hundred years, he served her as attendant and squad lieutenant, and vassal, her right hand in all things. Even after I took the throne and wed her, she kept him at her side, which many of the Elite in court found scandalous. But she would not put him aside for the wealth of the Empire, and I indulged her in that. Mostly because she came to my bed still virgin, and thus I knew he had never been her lover." Vegita fought to keep his face carefully expressionless as a mental picture of Nappa and the mother he had never known flickered briefly through his head. The thought Nappa as anyone's lover was one that he couldn't wrap his mind around without fighting a fit of laughter. "When she died bearing you," his father was saying, "I thought he would take his own life in his grief. So, I set him to serve the son as he had the mother. Do not take him for granted, boy! He is an incorruptible servant, whom you may trust implicitly, though I will be the first to say he is not quick of mind. But a man a king may trust with his life is to be valued above riches."

The evening ended with his father issuing a pointed invitation to Vegita to return to the Capital. "You were wise heed my command to keep a low profile these last months and let the talk die down, brat. But it is time to return."

So, he returned, reopening his favored residence in the hills just outside the Capital, the villa he preferred to the cold, stone halls of the Royal Palace. He was twenty-three standards years this winter, he told the King, and two strong-willed men should not dwell under the same roof if they would keep peace between themselves. Especially if they were father and son. Ottousama chuckled gruffly at that, and the matter was settled.

But a week later, his father coldly informed him that the fact that the Chikyuu woman still lived was news to him. "I told you to put her down, boy!"

"You told me to kill a madwoman, and I agreed," Vegita said. "When I went to do just that, I found that she had come back to her wits. You have not seen her, Ottoussama! She would make the greatest courtesans of Maiyosh-sei and Serulia hide their heads in shame. I spent the summer breaking her, and now she is a prize a man might pay the wealth of whole worlds to own."

His father regarded him silently for a long moment, his face hard and thoughtful. "You will do as you wish, boy," he said finally. "I cannot curb you with greater strength or force you to do a thing you do not wish to do." Vegita's mouth nearly dropped open at those words. The truth both men had known for years, that he had never thought to hear his father admit or utter aloud. "When you were an infant, Nappa once told me that you would not hear that the fire would burn your hand until you had tried to grasp it and singed the flesh off your fingers. I will let you learn that lesson in another fashion. Midwinter will be upon us in another two months, with its banquets and tournaments. Do no blame me if you find you social calendar a bit bare this year."

And Gods, he soon learned that his father had never spoken truer words. Vegita found himself, in the height of the season of food, tournaments and merriment, a virtual pariah. He received less than two dozen invitations during the month of Midwinter, and only from the oldest, most faithful of his father's councilors, when he should have had to chose between as many affairs in a single night. And aside from the worshipful cheers of the crowds as he hammered his opponents into the blood-soaked dust of the arena at each celerbatory contest of strength, his reception at the festivals of the few noble houses of Vegita-sei who did not suddenly find his company distasteful, was cool at best. Though no one had quite the suicidal gaul to say a word to his face, the stares, watchful and speculative, the gossip that sometimes began before he was even out of earshot, nearly sent him into a homicidal rage, curdling his enjoyment of the few feasts he had attended. Much of this, he should have expected. He had absented himself since the incident with Raditz, and his return to the Capital was the subject of much talk. The rumors that the Chikyuu woman still lived, that Vegita had indeed reaped the fruits of what everyone in the fucking Empire seemed to see as the wrongful death of his squad brother, had only added extra spice to the scandal. It seemed to sit ill with a great many people. The most telling aspect of the entire affair was the fact that not one of his own squad members, other than Nappa, of course, offered him their hospitality this season. As though to say that they feared he would covet something in their own households and kill them as he had Raditz.

His anger continued to rise, growing to something deadly and almost tangible with each slight as the month progressed, until the night his father's first minister of strategy, Articha, stopped him an instant before he stormed out of the great hall of her Capital residence, away from the hundreds of whispering guests, away from the ever-growing temptation to release his pent up rage and sweep every fool in the hall away in a storm of fire and death.

"No single subject may presume to call a Prince to accounts," the scar-faced woman told him softly. She drew him back to her sitting rooms off the main banquet floor, as the guests began making their way to the arena to watch and participate in what would be the season's second largest tournament. "But an entire kingdom can voice its displeasure as one. This would have happened whether you kept the girl or not, Ouji-sama. Hold your peace, and do not let them provoke you. It will only add fuel to the fire. Your father, I am sure, had made much of this. But only because he would not see such behavior as you have shown in this matter turn to habit, and threaten the stability of the Empire when you take his place. The truth is, it is not a great matter, and all things will be as they were by spring. By then, all these indolent fools will have some new scandal to buzz about. But…if you would see this foolishness end all the sooner, give them a brilliant show tonight as you fight, and they will leave in the morning whispering the legend of the Super Saiyan, and think no more of stolen slave girls."

His father's advisor proved as crafty in her political tactics as she was on the field. Vegita made a mental note after that night to reward her in some suitable fashion at some point in the near future. He fought like of maddened demon that night, and on every occasion that presented itself in the next few weeks, sending the crowds into a swoon of blood lust and worshipful howls of adoration. And by the end of Midwinter, his popularity with the both the noble houses and the common people was greater than it had ever been. And even his father had nodded his head in grudging admiration.

"It was a clever way to divert their attention from your indiscretions without having to lower yourself to speaking a word in your own defense," Ottoussama rumbled, shaking his head. "I have always ruled by pragmatism, the code of the warrior, and the letter of the old laws, but…You grow more like my father each year, boy. He made law and broke it as he wished, but he had the kind of charisma that made men worship him even as he was killing them. Perhaps we'll make a king of you yet."

Throughout the days of winter and into that spring he fought at every exhibition he could find, whipping the adoration of those who saw him kill higher still, driving his fighting power through the roof of its previous limitations with constant battle, far beyond anything Nappa had ever pushed him to achieve. Through the days that grew steadily longer and warmer as the winter waned, he drilled himself like a slave driver, pushing his body to the breaking point. He had learned an invaluable lesson in the last months. Adoration, not strength alone, gave a man license to do whatever he wished. And having all things as one would wish them to be was the only true freedom. If his people worshipped strength, he would become strong beyond the scope of their imagination. And they would deny him nothing.

And after he beat his body to a broken pulp each day, gaining power with each new set of injuries the increasingly complex and dangerous Madrani training gauntlets gave him, he would return to his woman and drive his body to its limits in a different fashion, very often until dawn.

He nearly started visibly one night, early in the spring, when he entered the villa and his private rooms, and she greeted him with a smile and a chilled glass of wine. "You look a little more tired than usual, Ouji-sama," she said softly. In the months since the end of their war of wills, he had lavished every luxury and gift within the reach of his imagination upon her. And her behavior, in return, had been exemplary. He would not have thought it possible for another living creature to please him so well and completely. And suddenly, he had found he wanted to speak with her, hear the sound of her voice crying out in pleasure as he took her. He had forgotten that he had told the house slave medic to discontinue the Silencing relaxant a week ago. It took several days for the vocal cords to reassert themselves when they had been stilled for a long period of time. He took the wine from her and drained it in one gulp.

"Your voice is as lovely as the rest of you," he said, tossing the glass aside and grabbing her. "Let us see if I can make you scream." And so he did. Again and again, teasing climax after climax out of her, until she wept his name, until she shrieked in his ear with pleasure…until she collapsed beneath him at the end, shuddering in a storm of tears that he realized belatedly were grief-stricken and nearly hysterical. He held her against his body, stroking her hair, utterly at a loss to say what was wrong with her.

"Speak," he said softly.

"Arf arf," she said. Her broken sobs had tapered down into little gasps, and now she laughed softly at the look of confusion on his face. "The cooks told me today that you've defied your father and the whole of Vegita-sei's nobility to keep me alive. Is that true?"

He had not thought of it in that way. "I suppose." He drew his mouth over her damp cheek, savoring the salt of her tears, kissing her lightly. He liked that Chikyuu-jin gesture a great deal. It was like tasting her mouth. "Do not fear. I will let no one harm you." And unaccountably, she began to cry again, softer this time, tears rolling slowly down her beautiful face.

"Damn you, Vegita," she whispered, turning her face away from his. "Why couldn't you just keep on hurting me?"

He was silent for a few seconds, before answering with a faint frown. "I never wished to. I only hurt you as long as you forced me to, woman."

Her blue eyes searched his, wide and wondering. "Kami…" She said softly. "You really believe that, don't you?"

His hold on her tightened angrily, and he was rewarded with a faint cry. The ungrateful bitch! Did she have any concept of the hell he had endured all winter for her sake, of the abject humiliation and he had born from his own people, all because he had kept her alive?! "I never bound you in my absence. If you had truly objected to my attentions, you could have taken your own life a hundred times over last summer!"

"My people believed that suicide is…giving up," she murmured. "That while there's life, there's always hope. The only way you can ever be defeated for all time is if you give up. And killing yourself is giving up."

"That is a very Saiyan idea," he said, glaring coldly down at her. He had indulged her too much in the last weeks, perhaps. She needed a firm reminder of her station in life. "But you have been defeated, woman. And I have spoiled you, it seems, with too much privilege of late. I was wrong to give you back your voice. I will have my staff medic repair that mistake in the morning! And if you wish me to hurt you, I can more than obligee you!" Then he had flipped her on her belly, pulling her hips roughly up to his waist, her face pressed down on the bed, and used her harder than he had since the heat had broken last summer. And…she did not cry out once, except as she came at the end, arching her back like of feline, rising off the mattress to meet his last few thrusts with surprising strength. And as she thrust backwards into those last fevered strokes, he was the one to cry out like a slave in pain, not her. He withdrew from her, every nerve in his body quivering, feeling in some dazed fashion that she had somehow taken control away from him, even as he hurt her. He staggered out of bed, seeking the tankard of wine on the table by the open window that looked down on the Capital, still dizzy with the after effects of having her like that, still furious with her. He stood gazing down on the lights, growing calmer by slow degrees, until he felt soft arms wind around his waist from behind

"I'm sorry," she said, brushing his tense shoulder with her lips. "I spoke out of turn. It's just…a lot of things I would have screamed at you months ago if I'd been able to speak are still sort of poised in my lips. Or they were." She moved around to stand before him, and kissed his lips, slow and savoring, until he thought his knees would buckle with desire. "I'm sorry, my sweet Prince. Please don't take my voice away. I'll behave myself."

Gods help him, if he grew any more enraptured, he would be powerless to deny her anything she asked of him. At least while she was touching him, at any rate. "See to it that you do, woman," he said shakily. "If you do…I will spoil you beyond all reason."

She kissed him again, deep and slow. Then she…she had him. There was no other word for it. And again, it was as though she were the mistress and he the slave. She pushed his unresisting body down beneath her, displaying a ferocity and skill in love play she had never shown before, playing his body like the strings of a finely tuned lyrt as she moved above him. And once again, he was the one to cry out as though he had been speared through the breastbone. Later, much later that night, as he lay wrapped around her against the chill of the still-cool nights of early spring, he gazed down at the odd little smile that played around her lips in sleep, and a strange thought occurred to him. In a way, she had just rebelled against him yet again, taking power over him and making him bend to her will in the only way she could. He smirked at the thought. She could rebel in this manner to her heart's content as far as he was concerned.

She proved true to her word, had behaved herself without incident. Until one day in late spring, when he commanded kitchens to served a special meal, to deck his villa's little hearth hall with fresh cut flowers, and dress her in the finest silks the Empire could furnish to await his arrival. He returned after a grueling day of training to find her seated at table, staring blankly at nothing. She did not responded to his voice, or even the sound of her own name, and a cold shiver of dread began to creep up his spine as he recognized that look of disconnected madness. He pulled her up roughly from her chair, shaking her, saying her name loudly, his voice unsteady. She blinked, and suddenly seemed to see him. Then she leaned into him, arms tightening around his body as though she thought she might drown if she let go. He had not told her the occasion this evening, but she was not a mindless fool, and could count the days on the calendar. It was one year today since she had become his. How could he have failed to think what this date would mean to her?

"I almost lost myself again…" She whispered against his neck, and he lifted her without thinking, carrying her away from the untouched meal, to the open window. He sprang into the sky, hurtling upward past the orange glow of the sunset that rimmed the planet's western edge like a ring of fire, and up though the fluff of clouds, glowing red and radiant in the light of the fading sun. He crossed his legs, and sat upon a giant nimbus, stroking her hair idly. She raised her head and gazed around and down in wonder like a child. "My gods…it's beautiful…"

"I have come to sit upon the clouds at sunset since I was a boy. Whenever I was troubled by anything."

"It makes us and our little lives seem very small, doesn't it?" She said softly. He grunted something in response, and she turned in his arms to meet his eyes. "Was it my fault?"

"What?"

"The first time we met…in my flower garden. You-you scared me to death, and you pissed me off. But when you touched me… It was like-My body reacted to you against its will. And I know you felt it. I could see it in your eyes." She clenched her teeth together, her eyes glowing and wild. "Was it my fault you wanted me so badly? If-if I hadn't reacted to you, would Raditz still be alive? Would-would my b-baby-?" Her little hands were clamped around his arms so tightly her fingers had gone white, her entire body was shaking apart with emotion. Was that what had driven her to near madness? Not the deaths of her man and son alone, but thinking she might have been to blame in drawing his attention to her?

"After the first instant I laid eyes on you," he said truthfully, "I think I would have set half galaxy to burn to have you." And she collapsed again in another round of tears, while he held her, feeling like of fool for encouraging this sort of hysteria, but powerless to do anything but rock her gently against him. A slow, creeping fear that he had not been able to place of define had finally given itself a name this evening. In one year, he had come to dote on her like-like nothing else in his life. Raditz had kept her as his woman for…five years? Would Vegita be as utterly in her power when she had been his as long? Willing to fly in the face of death and dishonor, willing to desert his world and his people for all time to keep her if need be? No. It was a fool's thought. Nor would he ever have to. He was the heir to the greatest empire the galaxy had ever known, strongest son of the greatest race ever to draw breath. And he would do as he wished! No one had the authority or the strength to take her from him.

They passed a long space of time in silence, watching the sky and clouds strewn about and below them fade to the color of dark smoke, watching the stars kindle in the night sky one by one. The feel of her, warm and drowsing in his arms, here in his private place of peace, was-He didn't have a word for this kind of contentment.

"Thank you," she breathed softly, just before sleep took her. "Thank you for bringing me here." So strange…The way she said those words in that unguarded moment. Speaking to him like one warrior to another, in gratitude for a gift received from an equal. Or as one would address a bitter enemy who had just shown some shred of unlooked-for honor. There was, he was beginning to believe, an integral piece of her that he had not touched, would never touch. That he only caught glimpses of now and then. He wondered with a puzzled frown if he had ever truly broken her, and indeed, if he even wished to anymore.

That thought began to plague him when he trained by day, and while he held her in the dead of night, as summer came round again. And the words of Raditz as he told the tale of how he had gained her devotion, if not her obedience, explaining why he had not curbed the girl or bridled her in any way. _The result is more than you can imagine…_That smile she had given Raditz as they stood together in her garden, because she adored him as a man rather than a master, had come from that true, deep self she had only shown him a few times since that first summer. And on each of those occasions…he had taken quick, brutal steps to train her to hide the true woman who lay beneath the obedient slave's mask.

_What do I want?_ he wondered a few weeks later, staring out the arched window of his father's Privy Council Chamber, as Councilor Turna droned out an eye-glazing list of facts and figures, an estimation tally of the wealth and tribute the Empire stood to lose were the planet Shikaji summarily purged for the crime of harboring insurrectionists. He could have a "breathing doll", as Raditz had called them, for the asking. The courtesans' wing in the Royal Palace was full of them, the most beautiful and skilled to be found in the Empire. He'd had the use of them since he had grown old enough to desire such things, and they had taught him all they knew of the arts of loveplay, so that the next queen of Vegita-sei might be well pleased when she came to her lord's bed. But now he found the mere thought of them…distasteful. He always had, on some level. Perhaps it was his innate revulsion for whores, creatures without pride or sense of self, that was tempting him to try a new game. To give his woman her head and let her run, but spoil and pamper her still. To try and coax that wild, indomitable creature, the one who had tried more times than he could count to take his life during her first few months as his property, back out into the light of day. And then win her adoration. Have it freely given, not taken, nor trained to mere obedience. What would it take? A long leash, he thought. With enough slack that she might begin to feel some semblance of freedom. And the patience of a deity, to let her speak her mind, though only in private. But the mere thought of having her turn those sapphire eyes on him with the same look of…of true heart-deep affection she had shown Raditz, was enough to make him-

"Would you like a pillow, boy?!" His father's voice snapped him out of his thoughts, and his face reddened as he saw that every eye in the room was on him. "If you are too disinterested in the affairs of the Empire to stay awake in Council, perhaps I will send someone else to head the purging strike of Shikaji!"

"I will go, Ottoussama!" Vegita sat upright in his chair, eyes gleaming with excitement, all thoughts of his woman fled for the moment. Shikaji was a world populated almost exclusively by Maiyosh-jin, a race with an abnormally high fighting power. The purge would not be another boring roast of mewling, semi-sentient cattle. It would be true battle!

"It is good to have your attention, brat," his father said, still glowering. "You will take a full compliment of six crack purging squads to command, and as many baubles of artificial moonlight."

"Moonlight?" Vegita frowning irritably. "They cannot be so well organized or strong as to warrant that!"

"They can and they are," Articha said quickly, before his father could voice a loud rebuttal. "We now have proof positive that since Vegita-sei purged Maiyosh Prime, more than thirty-five years ago, the refugees who dwelt on Shikaji have been paying their tithe to the Empire with one hand, and furnishing aid and comfort to terrorist armies such as the Red Demons with the other. Now, we have learned that the Red Demons have, in fact, been quartered on Shikaji for over a year now. This raid is a chance to put paid to the Maiyosh-jin underground once and for all. And to tie up lose ends," she murmured, gazing pointedly at Nappa.

"It is not my fault the little bastard escaped, you vicious bitch!" Nappa shouted. "I had accounted for all the royal house when we blew the planet's core. Was I supposed to run a fucking DNA screen on the corpses to make sure the babe Garida Maiyosh held was the true Maiyosh-jin prince?!"

"It might have saved us all a great deal of trouble had you done so," Turna said with a mirthless smirk. "That one infant you allowed to slip through your hands has given the Empire more grief than his entire race combined."

"What does intelligence say of Jeiyce of Maiyosh's whereabouts?" Vegita asked eagerly. "Will he be on Shikaji when we strike?!"

"So we have been told," Ottoussama rumbled, eyeing him in an odd way, as though trying to come to a decision. "Do not take the Red Prince lightly, boy. If you meet him on the field, it will not be an easy victory, perhaps not even for you. He is very, very strong. Saiyan strong. He has never faced a son a Vegita-sei in single combat who lived to tell the tale."

"I do not take him lightly, Ottousama," Vegita said, nearly shaking with joy. "I take him as a gift from the gods. Something I have never had in all my life. An enemy who will test my full strength!"

The older warriors seated around the table growled soft chuckles at those words, nodding their heads in approval. And his father grinned openly. "So be it. You leave tomorrow."

He vaulted into his villa an hour later, feeling like a child who had received his fondest wish, and swept his woman up in his arms, swinging her around, rising off the floor as he whirled with her.

"Jeiyce of Maiyosh…" She had said slowly. "Isn't he the rebel prince who killed so many Saiyans in the battle on Corsaris eighteen months ago?"

Vegita nodded, grinning ear to ear. "He is the only survivor of the royal house of Maiyosh Prime. The planet was purged in the years when my father was still forging the Empire, but Jeiyce escaped as a babe, and was raised by the Regent of Corsaris. He is the Empire's greatest and strongest enemy. And tomorrow, I will face him!"

"It will be a glorious victory for you, Ouji-sama," she told him, smiling that sweet smile that he suddenly realized did not touch her eyes. He regarded her thoughtfully for a moment, his exuberance slightly dimmed. There was no time like the present to begin his plan to enslave her heart.

"When I return," he said softly. "I will give you a gift of your choosing. Tell me, woman. What do you truly want? The truth."

"I want only to please you, my-" He lay his finger over her lips, silencing the lies. Gods…how could he have ever found this…this mummery appealing? And he had no one to blame but himself for training her so well and brutally.

"Speak to me as Bulma of Chikyuu, not as a slave in my household. Tell me truly. What do you want?"

She stared at him, her eyes suddenly wary, the facade of her smile slipping a bit. "The truth? The…the real truth?" She frowned at him suspiciously, and he had to hide a smirk. If only because if was a completely unaffected expression. And in that moment, his mind finally latched onto an exact definition of what he wanted from her. He wanted to see this real woman who he now held in his arms, the glitter of a sharp, fierce intelligence flickering in her eyes, receive him of her own free will. And adore him as greatly…no, more than she had that fool Raditz.

"A few years ago, during my first year on Vegita-sei," she said quietly, "I would have asked you for the head of Bardock on a silver platter. He purged my homeworld, and killed Son-Kun…his own son. Like he was putting a lame colt to sleep."

"That I would give you with great joy, woman," Vegita said, drifting back down to the floor with her, to sit in the great armchair before the window that looked down on the Capital, positioning her in his lap. The warm breeze tugged at her hair, ruffling it lightly. "But you no longer desire that?"

She smiled coldly, gazing out the window, her face lost in thought. "His mate Romayna is an interesting person. Not your typical Saiyan woman. She has a strong maternal sense, and she'd had hard feelings toward Bardock for giving Son-Kun to the pod seeding unit in the first place. She was furious at him for murdering Son-Kun-Kakarott. She told him what the hell did a soldier's son need with a full set of brains anyway. He had been strong and brave. So what if he didn't remember his infant conditioning. He could have been taught his heritage. She…she won't ever forgive him for killing their son. And he'll love her til his dying day, and live in agony because I doubt she'll ever take him back. So, he's better off alive, as far as I'm concerned."

"Cruel woman," he murmured softly, grinning. "So, then…" Vegita said, watching her face closely. "If not Bardock, what?"

"I guess a fast ship and my freedom is out of the question, huh?" She paled, realizing what she had just said without thinking. But he only shook his head slowly, forcing himself to not react at all, forcing down the anger and the impulse to repay her viciously for the surprising sting those words had given him. "I'm sorry, my prince…I-" He put his hand over her lips again, speaking gently.

"Do not be. I commanded you to tell me the truth. But I will not lose you. Anything else is yours for the asking."

"Even if I ask you to kill Nappa for me?" She whispered. The hand he had been tracing her face with froze. She regarded him with a cool, steady gaze in the sudden chill silence, smiling oddly. "He's your squad lieutenant now, and your aid. But he used to be your governess, didn't he?"

"Governess?"

"Your care-taker when you were a baby."

"Yes…Woman-"

This time she put one soft hand on his lips. "It's okay. I won't ask you for that either. I wouldn't want anyone in the galaxy to kill him except me." She paused like a cho-deer scenting danger, gazing at his troubled, angry frown. "So…let me think of a present that doesn't involve anyone killing anyone else. Can I have time to think about it, or do I have to decide right now?"

He considered. "Tell me when I return from Shikaji."

Shikaji was of world of monumental god-sized forests, and they were all on fire. The six squads had carved up the planet by sectors and dropped from their carriers, each on a separate part of the globe. And it was an all out battle! Maiyosh-jin, as a rule, had an average fighting power of seven or eight hundred. Dangerously high in a slave race. Shakaji, with its nearly two million of Maiyosh-jin inhabitants, had been spared for so long because the folk who dwelt here had never shown any interest in anything other than pleasing whichever master held the whip hand. But the ancient reputation of that race for treachery had proved true once again, and now Vegita-sei would pay for her leniency with an enormous loss in the revenue this rich world brought. And more than a few casualties. Every son and daughter of Maiyosh Prime old enough to fly had risen to the air when the air raid sirens had begun, and now Vegita saw the wisdom of his father's insistence in taking along the artificial moonlight baubles. The added size and strength of Oozaru was all that was keeping his squad from being over-whelmed by sheer numbers. He slammed a fist through the bole of a great tree nearly two miles high and belted a breath of blazing fire at the rushing scores of defenders, his blood soaring with the thrill of real combat. The titanic tree began to list and fall, shattering the earth beneath it as it crashed, and half of the ground structures of the city below. The air was full of fire and the smell of blood, and he screamed with mad joy.

_Ouji-sama!_ Nappa's mental voice seemed to be originating from his right, and he turned and snarled a ferocious grin and the monster who hovered just beside him. _We have lost contact with all three squads below the equator! They have not-!_ A red blur flew through the moon bauble directly above their heads, shattering it, and the world grew large again, as he watched Nappa shrink beside him, morphing down into-A bolt of Ki struck the big man through the chest, and Vegita had one moment of frozen horror to watch Nappa's face turn gray and bloodless, as he gazed down in shock at the hole through his heart. Then a fist slammed into Vegita's jaw and he flew back, spitting blood, snarling as though he were still in the grip of the Oozaru madness. The Maiyosh-jin warrior burned toward him and…and Oh Gods, they fought! It would have been like a joyous song of blood and violence, ringing in his ears, thrumming through every nerve in his body, to fight with every ounce of strength he possessed, against this opponent who was matching him blow for blow. But the vision of Nappa, death already blanching the flushed pallor of his face as he fell out of the sky, was like a knife in his stomach, twisting in a kind of pain he couldn't fathom. Quickly turning to murderous, blind rage.

"You will die today, son of Maiyosh!" He screamed. "And when you are dead, I will make it my business to seek out every member of your worthless, weakling race who lives, and build my sensei's pyre on the heaps of their slain carcasses!"

The man grinned nastily and caught Vegita with a sucker punch to the balls that doubled him over. Then he found himself being hurled to the burning earth, the other man's body bearing him downward, crushing him into the smoking ground with the impact. Vegita bit back a shriek as he felt the bones in both legs snap, as he landed with them bent underneath his body. Then he was hauled upward by the scruff of the neck, struggling in the grip of a bloody red fist that was locked around his throat in a hold he couldn't break. It was not so! It could not be possible! This son of a bastard race of cowards and back-stabbers could not be stronger than him! He could not!

"Prince Vegita, I presume?" The Red Prince said amiably, as though he were a guest of the Empire at some festival tournament. A fist drove into Vegita's ribcage, pounding the bones to fragments. "Damn! I'm disappointed. I thought you'd be a little stronger that this." Vegita howled and spat blood, trying desperately to tear himself free.

"…kill you…debt of blood and honor, you Maiyosh-jin fuck…"

"What? For killing the big fellow?" The man's knee rose, connecting with Vegita's ribs once again, driving the splintered bones into his lungs. "Debt of blood and honor, huh? I like the sound of that. Take a message to your daddy for me, little Prince. I will repay Vegita-sei, her King, and all her children for the destruction of Maiyosh Prime. I will repay them for the murder of my foster father, Lord Corsaris." Another blow to the ribs. Vegita was strangling, choking on red froth with every breath he drew now. "I will repay them for the murder of my wife, Jula.

And the next time we meet, laddie, I will repay Vegita-ou in kind for the death of my son Jahan by taking your life!" A soft, mocking chuckle pierced through the grinding pain and the gray haze that was pulling him slowly downward, away from the shores of consciousness. "Train harder, boyo. Maybe you'll last a little longer against me next time." The blackness closed in.

He woke to the sound of his father's voice, growling quietly at the Madrani slave medic. He focused on the man's face, hovering anxiously over him, and frowned. The Madrani was part of Vegita's own staff of house slaves. He was in his own bed, in his hillside villa.

…not dangerous at all?" His father was asking in a threatening voice.

"He is out of danger, Ou-sama," the medic said humbly, still adjusting some piece of a monitoring device that seemed to be connected to Vegita's body. "We had to remove the pieces of his rib bones in manual surgery, because the tanks will heal, but they will not extract bone fragments embedded in other organs. After that, we were able to repair the bulk of the physical trauma with a regen tank, but again, the pneumonia caused by the injuries to his lungs must heal naturally. A tank cannot cure that. We are siphoning the fluid out at regular intervals, to lessen the duration. He will begin to regain his strength in a day or so, though he will not be fully recovered for a week. What he needs now, is only to lie still and not move while he heals."

"You will have your freedom for this, fellow," his father rumbled. "The palace medics on my payroll gave him up for lost. Report to me his condition every three hours. I will be in War Council if there are any changes." The sound of their voices faded away, and Vegita's eyes grew too heavy to hold open any longer.

After what seemed like only a moment, though he knew some stretch of time must have elapsed, his woman's voice spoke softly, just beside his bed. "What will you do with you freedom, Scopa?"

The Madrani medic didn't answer right away. "The Royal Palace has free medics on staff. They're paid very handsomely, take vacations…What?"

"You don't want to leave?" She sounded aghast.

"Not really. I want to be free, certainly. But, I've been a slave on Vegita-sei since I was three years old, and Madran is gone. This world, warts and all, is the only home I've ever known. And I have someone dear to me that is still a slave. I want to save money to buy his freedom as well. He used to be Vegita-ouji's head chef, but he…he doesn't really have a gender preference. Likes women and men about the same. So, the Prince rotated him, along with all his other male staff, back to the Palace when you came to us. I couldn't exactly say, 'Hey, Ouji-sama, it's okay. He's with me.' "

"I'm sorry…"

"Not your fault, love. The fortunes of a slave of the Empire."

A little silence. "You look exhausted, Scopa. I'll watch him if you want to catch a few winks."

"No way, Bulma."

"You just said he was out of danger-"

"I mean no way am I leaving him alone with you in his condition." An uncomfortable tension seemed to seep into Vegita's muscles, even thought he couldn't move or even open his eyes.

"I wouldn't-" The girl began.

"Bulma." Scopa said firmly. "I am charged by my calling to help and not harm the injured. Whoever they may be. You're forgetting that I was the one who put you in a regen tank nearly every morning of that first summer after he'd finished with you. And I was the one whose entire medkit and mini surgery you dismantled each afternoon building weapons to try to kill him. I was the only one you could talk to, because I know how to read lips, love. And I distinctly remember you telling me that you would 'kill the motherfucker who murdered your husband and baby with your own hands if it was the last thing you did.' You told me that after he was dead, you would gladly 'damn your soul to Hell just so you could have the pleasure of watching him burn.' These are not things that make a physician comfortable leaving him in your care, even for a few minutes."

"I know you don't believe me," his woman sighed. "but it's true. I wouldn't hurt him now. Not while he's helpless like this, anyway. I can't even explain why in words that would make sense to anyone. If I tried, it would sound like madness. Except to say that…maybe when hate achieves a certain magnitude, it can become mixed up with passion and love, because those emotions all live on a level that hate seldom rises to. You know…I think he loves me, Scopa. As much as he's able, since he's never really been taught how. That's the saddest thing I can conceive of. To love, and not even know what it is you're feeling, or how to express it. So, you just grab the thing you love and squeeze it til it dies…"

"Bulma!" Scopa's voice sounded horribly afraid for some reason, and Vegita thought he knew why. He could almost see that look of 'not here' beginning to wash over her face.

"I'm okay," she said sharply. "I'm okay…"

Sound and consciousness faded, and he knew no more.

He opened his eyes to see her gazing down at him, one soft hand stroking his forehead. "How do you feel?" She asked.

"Like a man who very much wants to go to war," he rasped. "Has my father…" He broke off, shuddering in the grip of a deep, wracking cough.

"Declared war on the Maiyosh-jin?" She nodded. "Yes. You just missed him, in fact. He wasn't what I expected. He told me not to smother you in your sleep unless I absolutely had to."

Vegita tensed. "He was here?" He wondered if she even suspected how lucky she was that she had managed to charm his father in some way, after the embarrassment of the scandal that had surrounded her. "You are very lucky to be alive, woman," he said. And to his shame his voice shook slightly as he spoke those words.

She nodded again. "I believe you. He didn't notice me until he was ready to leave, then he came over and tilted up my chin with one finger, and just stared at me for a minute. Then he grinned, and said, 'Now I see what all the fuss was about.'"

Vegita uttered a weak, croaking chuckle, or tried to. His eye caught Scopa hovering on the other side of the bed, running a med scanner over his chest. "Doctor…leave us. I will send the woman to bring you back in a moment."

"Ouji-sama, I-"

"Now." The medic left reluctantly, eyeing Bulma with a worried frown. Vegita regarded her silently, and she returned his gaze with no expression whatsoever on her flawless, porcelain face. "What would I have to do to make you want me, woman?" The words tumbled out of his mouth before he could stop them.

"Are we still speaking absolute truth, Ouji-sama?" She murmured softly.

"Still."

"Nothing. I do want you. And I hate myself because of it. It's not madness that a man could kill my family, rape me a dozen times a night for months on end, and force me to eventually do what he asked of me. It's madness that I could love my husband, but nearly burn alive with desire the first time you put your hands on me in my garden. It's madness that, after you had done all those unforgivable things to me, you could make me come the first time I gave in to you. Make me want you against my will, against my mind, against my reason, like a fire in my blood. I think that is…is the worst thing you've done to me. But that's not what you're asking, is it? You're asking what can you do to make me love you."

He was silent, his eyes burning into hers, waiting to see if she would answer. "I don't know," she said. "It seems like it would be impossible, doesn't it? But a year ago, I would have thought it was impossible that I would ever…ever want you. So, maybe it's possible. But even if I did come to-to love you one day, I would still…I'll always hate you, too. I wish I didn't. I wish I could stop, because hate hurts like a knife in your heart. And my father always said that if you hate your enemy, you'll eventually become him. And that's the worst kind of defeat." She sat on the bed, and bent to kiss his lips. "I won't tell you it couldn't happen. But I can't tell you how. Because I don't know. But…maybe I can tell you where to start. Empathy is putting yourself in someone else's shoes, feeling what it would be like to be that person, imagining how everything you do to that person effects them as though it were being done to yourself. That's one of the foundations of love."

And she rose without another word and left him pale and staring after her, closing the door quietly behind her.

He woke again, after another full day of sleep, rising to shaky feet, pulling on his clothes. He turned a deaf ear to Scopa's plaintive please, except to suggest that the man take his business and few belongings to the palace, as Vegita had no mind to pay the doctor of freeman's wage. His woman watched him weave across the floor, and put one hand on his chest, stopping his unsteady progress.

"Tomorrow," she said. "Do you want to fall on your way to the palace and have people see it?" He stopped. He did not want that. He sat in the largest chair in the hearthroom, sipping gingerly on the wine she poured him. A thought occurred to him.

"I never gave you your gift."

Her mouth quirked. "I guess it kind of slipped your mind. I did think of something, though. Do you remember me telling you your father had declared war on the Maiyosh-jin?" He growled softly, nodding. He wanted to be at the War Council, dammit! The only thing that kept him from raging toward the palace like a mad thing was the thought of the abject humiliation of passing out in front of his father's Councilors. "You haven't missed anything yet," she told him, reading the frustration on his face. "They can declare war on the Maiyosh-jin all day, but to fight them, they have to find them first. There were about seven planets comprised mostly of Maiyosh-jin former refugees. After Shikaji, within a few hours, they just up and evacuated without a trace. Whole planets full of people." He frowned in annoyance at the admiration in her voice.

"Plus…about three quarters of the people on Shikaji managed to escape." His low growl turned to a full-throated snarl, and she stepped back, away from him, her eyes becoming veiled again. He was…he was forcing her back into hiding, he knew, but it was all he could do not to blast the villa to pieces around them, as the cold truth sunk in and cut to the bone. He had been defeated. He had been beaten like a mongrel animal by a-by a-! He closed his eyes, fighting for calm. Save it. He must save the fury for the rematch.

"Go on," he said after a moment, with some measure of control.

"The problem now," she went on slowly, "The issue they are discussing in Council right now, is where to find them. The Maiyosh-jin have simply disappeared. Though they really

needn't-" She stopped herself.

"Needn't what?" He prodded.

"Needn't look," she told him, eyeing him uncertainly. "They're putting together an organized rebellion now. No more of this strike and run skirmishing. You won't have to look for them. They'll find you soon enough." He felt a slow grin begin to spread across his face. She was right. And in the mean time, he would take the Red Prince's mocking advise to heart and train. Train like he had never done before. So that when they met again, he would ram each poison, bile-laden word down the Maiyosh-jin's throat!

He stared at her curiously.

"How do you know these things?"

"Some I hear from Caddi and Batha in the kitchens, things they heard from slaves in the palace. Some of it is…just common sense."

"Uncommon sense, I think," he said, thinking of the dozens of little weapons she had built to try and-He wondered abruptly just how intelligent she was.

"My gift is sort of related to the fact that the Empire will soon be at war," she said suddenly.

"Tell me."

"If there's going to be a war, there will be casualties, right?"

"I suppose."

"I want to work in the Capital's main medical and research center during the day. Scopa said I can apprentice under him, and learn medicine."

He stared at her blankly for a few seconds. "Why?"

"I-it has to do with my homeworld being destroyed," she said, easing back toward him, sitting at the base of the hearth pit before his chair, warming her hands against the morning chill. "I've seen more death than I ever could have imagined possible as a young girl. And I want to…to learn how to heal people because of that. To sort of combat death wherever I can. That sounds weird, even to me, but it's a true wish. And you are always training until evening anyway. You'll be training late into the nights now, won't you? So, I'd always be back to the villa before you." He nodded in vague surprise that she had seen into his plans and the inner workings of his mind. He wondered with an uneasy chill just how well she knew him. "So…what do you think?"

She was correct that he would be throwing all his will and effort into his training now. And as long as she was there to greet him when he returned…But the thought of her in the presence of other men, of having their eyes roving over her, the thought of another man touching her in any way-! He took a deep breath, thinking hard. He could work around that with creative staffing. It would-it would give her a semblance of freedom. And he had promised her such a gift. And she was notorious, thanks to the scandal of Raditz' death. Everyone on Vegita-sei knew who she was and to whom she belonged. No man who was not out of his mind would so much as cast his eyes in her direction. And it would make her feel…good. She must feel confined, that brilliant mind of hers forced to lie fallow. As he was being forced to keep inactive now, barred from the training fields by his injuries. He was fighting the urge to grind his teeth even as he spoke with her, in frustration at not being able to do the thing the gods of war had wrought him for.

"Go with him tomorrow and begin your training," he told her quietly. And…God of gods….She smiled at him. A real smile.


	2. Chapter 2

**DISCLAIMER: **I DON'T OWN DBZ OR ANY CHARACTER OF THE SAME. I'M NOT RECEIVING ANY MONEY FROM THE WRITING OF THIS PIECE OF FAN FICTION.

**WARNING: **ALL YE UNDER 18 GO AWAY NOW! This fic contains violence, adult themes, sex, and profanity. It is not my usual romantic drama/adventure, and has some very dark, disturbing imagery and themes related to rape. If this is not your thing, don't read it.

**FORWARD:** This is a WHAT IF scenario that Toshiba and I discussed initially, and from those conversations grew this dark, dark story. I've been accused, on occasion, of having a very evil imagination. I may have outdone myself here. For all those who enjoy the often-used theme of "Bulma is taken to Vegita-sei as a slave and catches the eye of the Saiyan no Ouji", here's my version of the tale.

**CHAPTER II**

The faces of the Royal Councilors were carefully expressionless as they watched him slowly take a seat on his father's right hand, hiding the fact that they had just seen him stumble and nearly fall, trying to mask their knowledge of his shame, his defeat. He fought to keep his hands and body from trembling with rage and humiliation, knowing they would see it and think he was on the point of collapse. They needn't have bothered with this discreet foolery. They knew what every sentient being in the Empire knew.

He had been defeated in battle, in single combat. Jeiyce of Maiyosh had beaten him like an animal within an inch of his life, and worse, left him alive out of contempt. The day had been lost, his soldiers decimated. His first lieutenant slain...

His gut twisted again at as the image of Nappa falling from the sky, impaled by Jeiyce's Ki bolt, dead before his great body struck the ground. That knowledge, the stark finality of it, had been slow to sink in as he had lain weak and too injured to rise. The big man was gone. The sure, rock-steady presence that had been a constant in his life since-since well before his own birth, was missing. And the absence could not be shouted down, threatened, blasted away or ever taken back. Irrevocable. His father's eyes, sharp and all seeing, watched his son's gaze fall on the empty Councilor's chair Nappa would have occupied.

"Nappa's body has lain in med-stasis while you were recovering, boy. He was your faithful servant, and would have wished you to build his pyre."

Vegita nodded silently, his face like stone. "I will see to him this evening. Atop Cho-Tal mountain."

The other members of Council murmured in approval. A warrior who died in defense of the Royal House should be burned atop that speared peak reserved for Kings and heroes of Vegita-sei. Ottoussama broke the solemn-faced silence that followed, his own face growing hard.

"We are arresting every Maiyosh-jin that is to be found within the breadth of the Empire, and bringing them to Vegita-sei. They will be thoroughly questioned by the Minister of Intelligence." His eyes turned to the pockmarked, mottled face of Mousrom. The Inquisitor nodded with a kind of ugly eagerness that set Vegita's teeth on edge. Only the basest manner of coward gleaned pleasure from torturing a bound enemy. Mousrom was terribly efficient at what he did, and his intricate network of spies and informants hidden throughout the Empire was a thing of beauty. Systematic torture of non-combatants was an ugly means to an end, and grim necessity. But there was no honor in it, or in the torturer himself.

"We have rounded up twenty thousand of them from Arbatsu already," Mousrom said with an unpleasant grin. "There was a sizable community nestled within the cities of the Arbatsu natives. To this number, I have also added the entirety of the Maiyoshi-jin courtesan whores who were under contract to the Throne and other noble houses on Vegita-sei itself. You may be sure, Ou-sama, that if one of them has one scrap of information as to the whereabouts of the Red Prince and his followers, I will wring the truth from them."

"I have no doubt," his father murmured. The King's face showed no hint of distaste for the man, but Vegita had the sudden impression that his father had a roiling contempt for the Inquisitor that rivaled his own.

"The Red Prince will find us soon enough," Vegita said, thinking of his woman's eyes as she had given his this insight, burning with intelligence like a blue flame. "He will seek us out. He told me what he plans, what he most desires, as we fought," the last words tapered down into a soft snarl of hatred. "Lord Corsaris fostered him from infancy. The planet Corsaris was where he made his base and quartered his mate and his son. When we took that world eighteen months past, we slew his woman, his foster father, his heir, and put the world he knew as home to the torch. He means to repay Vegita-sei for these losses. And you personally, Ottoussama, for the death of his son, by slaying me in combat."

His father's face had gone black with rage, perhaps thinking of how very, very close Jeiyce had come to doing just that. "He will find us. And when he does, I shall be ready or him! If I must break my own bones and train to the point of death each day from this day until we meet again, I will! And the next time, Ottoussama, I will rip him limb from limb!" A low rumble of agreement rolled through the chamber, and his father studied him with grim pride.

The next hour consisted of Turna bringing forth a list of possible retaliation targets, worlds thought to have had dealings with the Maiyosh-jin rebels in the past. Turna droned on, weighing and measuring the losses in revenue against the potential strategic threat each world might pose if it became a hive of rebellion. Vegita felt his mind begin to wonder after a while, and he began to wonder idly what his woman was doing this moment at Med Center. Today was her first day apprenticing under Scopa, and

she-Mousrom's wheedling voice snapped his attention back to the here and now.

"...but Med Center here in the Capital would be the most convenient location to set up a mass interrogation facility. We could make use of the personnel who labor there in keeping the subjects alive much longer if we-"

"Med Center," Vegita said flatly, before his father could answer, "is a haven where our unborn warriors grow to viability, and where we heal our wounded. It would be an insult to the blood our soldiers shed to use the same facility as a torturer's hovel!"

Mousrom's marred, fat face paled, his lips going thin with anger. He turned a questioning eye to the King's chair, but found no support there.

"The boy speaks the truth," Otoussama said shortly. "Do your business in the old slave pens in Kharda City to the north. They have a full, if outdated, med lab there."

Mousrom nodded obediently, but his eyes had shrunk to twin slits in submerged anger, though he dared not to so much as turn his gaze in Vegita's direction.

Another hour of decision making, while Vegita sat in silent, seething contemplation of all the things he would do to Jeiyce when he and the Red Prince came to grips once again. As the Councilors filed out of the great circular chamber, Vegita did not move from his chair. His father eyed him silently for a moment before speaking.

"Mousrom will not forget that, boy."

"Good," Vegita said irritably. "His behavior borders on insolence at its best. He is an insult to all true warriors, and I will kill him gladly if ever he speaks out of turn."

"He is my Minister of Intelligence, boy. He knows every secret in the Empire. Mine included." His father frowned. "Knowledge is great power in the right hands. He will find a way, sooner or later, to repay you for such a heavy-handed slight."

Vegita frowned himself, this time in genuine curiosity. "If he is so dangerous, why do you not kill him?"

His father grunted. "He is very, very useful. He has given me information on more than one occasion that has saved the Empire the trouble of putting down a full-scale rebellion. And thus, saved the lives of many Saiyans warriors. It is a game we play, he and I. He knows his life will end the day I suspect him of disloyalty, or the instant he ceases to be of great use to the Throne. And thus, he is carefully loyal, and very motivated to always be of use. And we will need him in this war we are about to fight."

Vegita's eyes narrowed angrily. "He gives you a full account of my private business, does he not, Ottousama?"

Ottoussama's lips curled minutely on the end. "You are thinking of that business with Raditz last year? Yes." The almost smile slid away to be replaced by a warning look. "Your business is mine, boy. I've invested nearly a quarter of a century in you, and occasionally, you show great promise. I would have been very annoyed to have to begin the tiresome business of raising another heir to manhood again. So, I keep close tabs on you through Mousrom." His father paused thoughtfully, before going on. "And as we are speaking of the business with Raditz...I have seen with my own eyes now just how handsomely you profited from the man's death. The prize you stole from Bardock's son is a dangerous one, boy. Tell me...has it occurred to you yet that you wish her to look upon you with complete devotion? To stay as yours of her own will, even should you set her free?"

Vegita stared at him in such open-mouthed shock that the King chuckled outright. "On the fifteenth anniversary of my birth," his father went on. "My father gifted me with the contract of a free red-haired Zapria-jin courtesan. She was a very beautiful and crafty woman, wise in the ways of politics and power.

In the year she spent in my bed, she instructed me as much in the psychology of ruling over men's minds and hearts as she did in the arts of bed play. And because I was an heir to a throne who might not wed where he chose, and must hold his affections in trust for a future queen, she also taught me which manner of woman to take as my mistress...and which sort of avoid. One lesson she emphasized in particular was how to spot an 'unbreakable'. That is what she called this sort of woman. You may bind her, chain her, over-power her, crush her body or kill her. In time, you may force her to do to your will...but only on the surface. But whatever you do to her, she will always remain essentially as she was on the first day she came into your possession. She will never bend or break to your will. Like the women of our own race, she cannot be tamed. But she can be won."

"Yes," Vegita murmured with a smile. "You see the thrill of such a challenge, then."

"I see the danger she represents to you, boy," his father said flatly. "Because by the time the idea of winning her true heart occurs to you, it has already become unclear who is the master and who is the slave. And should you succeed in this fool's errand, should you win her adoration, you will find that she has ensnared your heart as well. For all of your life, most likely. And whether you cast her off in the end, or put her down, she will haunt you til your dying breath."

Vegita snorted indignantly. What kind of weak-willed fool did his father take him for? "What would you do with such a woman, Ottoussama?"

"I would not have taken her to my bed in the first place. But, having done so already...I would kill her. With my own hands. You may still dream of her all your days, but at least she will gain no greater power over you." He studied the carefully blank expression on his son's face.

"She has no power over me!" Vegita said as sharply as he dared. But deep within him, an internal grain of doubt began to fester, as he thought of his sudden over-whelming desire to know her, the real woman, not the doll he had trained to mere obedience, and his inexplicable desire to win her heart. He could not even explain where the need had come from, when the whim of a new game, the challenge of one last scrap of her will to be conquered, had shifted to this bone-deep want to see her will unchecked...and have her want him still, adore him still. But...no! His father's concerns were errant foolishness. He was the master and she the slave, and so it would always be!

"I will be rid of her when I have had my fill of her, Ottoussama. But that day is not yet here. I do not prize her as greatly as you seem to think-"

"Is that why she entered into an apprenticeship at Med Center with your former house medic this morning?" His father asked, frowning. That fucking sneak-spy Mousrom again! Vegita issued a low, barely audible growl, and his father smiled grimly. "Adamant will would not matter so much, were she not such a great beauty. The kind of beauty that makes of man's blood boil in his veins. Nor would I deem her dangerous, if she were some brainless bit of fluff. But when I looked into those lovely blue eyes as you lay injured in your bed, I took the measure of her. She must have been reared in a ruling house of that back-water world Bardock found her on. She has a mind like a spring trap, boy. She will probably out-pace her mentors at Med Center within the month. In a year, she'll be running the place." He snorted. "Were you not so tangled up in her arms as you are, I would say leave her there. She is wasted as a whore. Still...the best course of action would be to have done with her. Iron will, a brilliant mind and a motive for revenge are a wicked combination, brat. And do not mistake her. Unless you have the surgeons selectively pair her memory, she will always want vengeance. She will not forget the death of Raditz or her cub." He sat a moment in silence, regarded his son's hard, implacable expression. "You will do as you will, as ever. But if you truly believe she has no power over you, tell me this. Had I killed her myself two days ago in your villa, as my instincts bade me, what would you have done? You are too young and green to rule in my place, boy. And I flatter myself to think that you have not yet tired of my company. But I think, had I slain her, you would now be sitting on my throne." His father stood, and Vegita stood with him, his mind rolling through the scenario his father had just presented him again and again. Gods...he _would_ have killed the old man in his rage, though he would have regretted it later.

Ottoussama spoke the truth. He would have gone insane if he had awakened to find her dead by his father's hand. The King did not speak, only watched the younger man silently, letting this all sink in.

"Come, boy," he said after a moment. "Nothing need be decided this instant. I will come to you to see to Nappa. I never liked the man, but he served my House loyally all his days."

They burned Nappa's body upon the sheered peak of Cho-Tal with a great many warriors, common and Elite, in attendance. The funeral seemed to be a herald of the war to come, and all the Capital turned out to watch. Besides Vegita's own, not one hand raised wood to the big man's pyre. Nappa had been almost universally disliked and feared, even among Vegita's own squad. _Had I died on Shikaji, who would have built your pyre, Sensei? _He could not think of anyone, even his own father, who had called the man friend. His face bore no expression at all as he set the bier alight, as he stood beside his father, watching the blaze lick upward into the darkening sky.

"You are old to have lost a friend you valued for the first time, my son." Vegita nearly started visibly in surprise, though he didn't look away from the flames. His father had called him 'my son' perhaps half a dozen times in his life. Always in a moment of some great importance. "I should have seen that you were hardened to this sort of thing long ago. But we have had no strong enemies for most of your life, and Saiyans are hard to kill in the worst of times. You will see others fall before this war is won, boy. Mousrom says there are rumblings from every corner of the Empire. If this bastard Jeiyce can persuade even a fraction of the slave worlds to rise against us as one, we will have a hard fight not to be overborne by sheer numbers."

Vegita turned to stare at him. His father had not mentioned a word of this in Council. "You have always said that war is a good thing, Ottoussama. It sweeps the weaklings from our gene pool and makes the strong stronger."

"No victory is ever assured," his father said grimly. "Though I would not voice doubts before my ministers, or any of my subjects, under threat of torture. If we are strong, we will survive. If not, we don't deserve to live. But a war, a real war, will bring you that much closer to viability as a king. And that is a good thing. There are lessons a Saiyan no Ouji should know that can only be learned on the field, with his back up against a wall. And you will learn them all in the next year. They will help you to become a strong, cunning King in a very few years."

Vegita shifted uncomfortably. "You are not old, Ottousssama."

His father turned to study the utterly blank expression on his son's face. "I should have kept more distant from you, brat. It will be harder for you to take your rightful place when your day finally comes, because I have not. But..." His father turned back to regard the flames that spiraled up from the pyre. "It has been difficult not to be overly proud of such a strong son. I am 230 years next winter, my son. Just on the cusp of middle years. If you have any regard for me at all, you will spare me the dishonor of gray hair."

"I will not fail you, Ottoussama," Vegita whispered, barely above a breath.

His father only nodded. "It is good."

He touched down on the threshold of his villa, so wound up in troubled thoughts, none of which he wanted to untangle and examine too closely at the moment, that he did not at first notice the wreckage in the entryway and the hearth room...or the smear of bright red leading from the shattered glass of the crystal dining table to the open arch of the great east window that faced the back of the villa, looking out on the rolling green hills, rather than the Capital. He followed the blood trail, his heart in his throat. She was sitting in the window seat, propped up against the stone sill of the window, and-Oh gods, she had opened up her wrist and her life was pouring away through the gash like water through a fissure in a punctured damn. She turned her ghost white face to him, trying to speak, trying to move her lips. He didn't bother to try and decipher her words. He snatched her up in both arms and shot out the open window in a burning streak of speed.

The medics let out a collective shriek as he slammed through the ceiling feet first, and set her on a med cot. He swept the room, fixing on a familiar face. "The rest of you-out!" The other medics scattered like terrified vermin, leaving Scopa to face him alone. The doctor was already hovering over her, not waiting for a command.

"What have you done, you fool girl?" The Madrani was muttering softly.

"Fix her!" Vegita snarled. Every nerve and muscle in his body seemed to be trembling. "Your life depends on it, doctor!"

Scopa nodded absently, working in silence as he patched up the wound in her wrist with a med swab and injected a blood transfusion tube in one of the Chikyuu woman's arms. "I have to give her more blood before we put her in a tank." He patted one of her blanched cheeks where a tiny bloom of pink was beginning to materialize and heaved a sigh of relief that had nothing to do with fear for his own life. "You got her here in time, Ouji-sama. She'll be all right." The Madrani took one limp wrist and turned it gently, his worried frown unfurrowing slightly. He jumped as Vegita slammed his fist through the cot beside his woman's bed, shattering the thin metal to pieces.

"There is no remedy for this, doctor," Vegita said bleakly. "Neither medical nor forcible. If a living thing wills its own death, it will find a way. It is only a matter of time." But why now? When she had begun to wheedle some semblance of freedom from him, when all things in her life seemed to be moving toward betterment. Why now, and not-not last summer?

"Was there a mess in the villa when you arrived, Ouji-sama?" Scopa asked tentatively.

"She tore the place apart," Vegita said.

"She-she didn't do this to herself on purpose, my Prince."

Vegita stared hard and the Madrani and the man swallowed before continuing. He held up the woman's arm, and examined the rapidly healing wound once again. "I'd say she smashed her hand through the glass plate of the dining table and accidentally opened a vein when is shattered. Dammit...I knew something wasn't right when she left!"

"She was very pleased when I sent her to you this morning, doctor," Vegita said. He raised a baleful, deadly eye to the Madrani. "What displeased her?"

The man didn't raise his eyes from the stats readout of his bio-monitor. "The funeral, Ouji-sama. She's very isolated from any kind of news in your villa, though I can't think of why Batha and Caddi didn't mention it to her. She hadn't heard that Lord Nappa was slain until we all saw the smoke on top of Cho-Tal. We watched the funeral from the steps of Med Center. Everyone in the Capital did." The man's face had grown particularly blank as he continued speaking, taking on the careful non-expression of a slave schooled since infancy to hide his thoughts and feelings from his betters. "Bulma...she had a particular interest in Nappa-san, Ouji-sama."

"I know her interest," Vegita snapped.

"When she learned he was dead...She was like a warrior who has just seen his greatest, most hated enemy slain by another's hand, my Prince. I haven't seen her in such a rage since-" He stopped his words, his face once again carefully blank.

_I don't want anyone in the galaxy to kill him other than me,_ his woman had said. The face of Jeiyce of Maiyosh swam before his eyes for a instant, mocking him, beating him down again. He had an inking of the kind of rage she had been feeling. He might tear the Capital itself to pieces in his rage if he learned someone other than himself had slain the Red Prince. Vegita's did not shift his deadly gaze from the Madrani's amber face, as these thoughts made their way through his head. He smiled coldly. "Since last summer?" He finished the doctor's sentence for him.

"As you say, Ouji-sama," the man stammered.

"It is your professional opinion that this was not a deliberate attempt to take her own life? Think well before you speak, doctor. If she dies by her own hand because I have set no watch on her, I will see that you are weeks in Mousrom's care before you finally depart this life."

The Madrani shook his head confidently. "My Prince...she would not have been so incompetent. If she had wished to die, she would be dead now. She will not die like that, though. She will go out kicking and screaming."

"Yes..." Vegita murmured finally, after turning the doctor's words over in his head a moment or two. "I think you are right." This was the strangest conversation he'd had in longer than he could recall, standing beside this lowly freedman, speaking to him as though he were almost an equal. But the heavy leaden weight that had closed around his chest had eased up by the time he stood watching the tendrils of the woman's soft, blue hair float in a halo around her face after Scopa placed her in a regen tank.

An hour later, he wrapped her in a thick blanket the Madrani provided and bore her half-waking body home to his villa in the dark. She slumbered restlessly beside him, tossing and murmuring in her own language, until he began to wish he had commanded the doctor to sedate her. Just as dawn began to burn the black into russet on the horizon, she sat bolt upright, shrieking a name he had heard her mutter in her sleep before, the name she must have given the son she had born Raditz. He caught her before she bolted from the bed, holding her down as she wailed against him, small fists pounding on his chest. He shook her lightly after a moment or two of this. The piercing noise she was making was lancing through his head, and this on top of a long sleepless night plagued by the shade of Nappa and the vicious laughter of the Red Prince set his temper on edge.

"Stop it!" He said harshly. Her eyes were suddenly wide with full wakefulness. "The dead are dead! And no amount of wailing will raise them again!" His voice cracked on the last words, as he saw again Nappa's body falling like a cloven tree. She went still in his arms, calming slowly, blue eyes searching his face. She finally shook her head despairingly, more tears marring the porcelain perfection of her cheeks. "When will the pain stop?" He realized to his horror that he had spoken the thought aloud, his voice a raw whisper.

"When someone you care about dies?" She asked softly. "Never. But they say in time, you get used to it. I'm starting to doubt that though. Karot-chan…" Her words failed her for a moment. "His death is like a wound that never heals. I always thought that if I could kill Nappa myself, it would start to heal. Now, I'll never know."

"Why…" He paused, wondering if the question in his mind, something that had always puzzled him, would set her to shrilling again. "Why the son and not the father? You were Raditz' woman.

He would have spurned his world and his people for your sake. You knew him. Adored him, I think. The boy could not even speak yet. You've no way of knowing if he would have grown into a man worthy of your affection." She was silent, staring at him incredulously for a long time.

"It's almost impossible to explain to someone who's been conditioned to have no inherent familial love," she said slowly.

"Raditz was very good to me…and I grew to love him after a while. But…" She closed her eyes, sighing sadly. "He never lost sight of the fact that I was his. That he owned me. He never understood what was wrong with that, or that his father had done anything wrong when he destroyed my homeworld. And more than that, he was a strong man who could defend himself. Karot-chan was helpless. And innocent. And all mine. I carried him under my heart for ten months and…he was a part of me. That's the real reason your women don't carry their children to term, Vegita. If they did, they'd rise up and gut all the men who wanted to take their babies away from them." He was silent. She shivered lightly against him. "Kami…I've never spoken about him aloud, not like this…I feel like I just forced up a belly-full of poison. For so long, all I could think of was one day killing my son's murderer. I think that was-was poisoning me as well."

His spoke very softly, so as not to frighten her into a pleasing lie, so he might hear the cold truth. "Do you hate me as greatly as you did Nappa? Do you dream of killing me still?" He watched her eyes go wary suddenly. "Tell me truly, woman. I slew Raditz in single combat. My hand did not take the boy's life, but I would have ordered it done just the same, though not before your eyes."

"I would have ordered Nappa's death if I could have," she said slowly. "But I didn't. And you would've ordered Karot-chan killed. But you didn't. Might have beens aren't the same as deeds done."

"No," he said bluntly. "But the blame is still at my feet, woman."

"Yes, it is," she said flatly. "But I wouldn't kill you, Ouji-sama. Ever."

He felt a tiny, indulgent grin begin to pull at one corner of his mouth. "That is a relief."

Her eyes glittered like blue agates, brilliant and cold. "You don't think I could kill you if I wanted to? I have a lot more resources at my disposal than I did on that island you kept me on those first months, Vegita. The pouza spice flowers that grow wild in these hills can be harvested for their roots, did you know that? Boiled down into a lethal poison that could kill you in half a minute if I pricked your skin with a diamond blade while you were sleeping. The synthetic fabric that covers the chairs in this bedroom will burn almost forty- percent cyanide if I set if on fire. Both terrible ways for a warrior to die, don't you think, Ouji-sama?"

His body had gone still as a stone as she spoke. The gentle hand that had been stroking the soft fall of her hair stopped at her delicate, defenseless neck. He took a long, slow breath before speaking, trying to calm himself. Nappa's ghost voice floated through his head, scolding him as a tiny boy for some childish tantrum_. If you break your toys, you cannot play with them thereafter, my Prince._

"You've given this some thought," he finally managed to say coldly.

"Yes," she agreed. "Quite a lot. And I decided against it. At first, only for the same reason I've never stolen a ship and escaped.

Scopa finally explained to me when we moved back to the Capital that when one slave escapes, all the others in the household are put to death. If I did you in, your father would probably kill every slave on Vegita-sei."

"That he would," Vegita agreed.

"I also decided that if I were to take revenge on you, I wouldn't' kill you."

"Ah," he smirked. "A fate worse than death for me? Like that fool Bardock. So, how do you plan to torture me, woman?" Something was beginning to stir inside him, shifting the anger to an almost unbearable excitement, a thing that he sensed was close kin to the biting insults and mutual predatory stance of a Saiyan courtship spar.

"The same way Bardock is being tortured," she smiled wickedly. "With love. I'm going to make you love me. Real love, Vegita no ouji. Mad and boundless and forever, like the twinned souls of moonbound warriors. I'll make you love me…and when you do, when I'm absolutely sure I have your whole heart, I'll use that love to destroy you."

He laughed aloud. "You have a very elevated opinion of your place in my life, woman."

"Think so?" She kissed him, one hand smoothing down his back to brush his tail. He rumbled low in his chest, tightening his arms around her. "You're half-way there already."

It was like ice water tossed on his bare back during deep sleep. A chill and a deep, atavistic ripple of unfamiliar fear went shooting through him. And on its heels, anger. "You…insolent bitch!" He snarled, arms clenching reactively, hearing her faint cry and a dull snap only dimly through his rage. He pulled back, drawing back his hand to deliver a blow that would have very probably broken her neck had it fallen. And froze, staring into eyes that were the color of the sea at sunrise, full of pain, but strangely calm. He had over-powered her countless times during the first months that she had been his, but he had never struck her. Not once. And now…now he could not. His hand and the arm attached to it would not obey. He let his hand fall limp to his side, his breath gripping once more in his chest as he shifted her gently, probing her ribcage with a light touch. He had held her so tightly, he had cracked a rib.

"Is the tank in Scopa's old surgery still there?" He asked softly.

She nodded. "I don't need a tank for this. There's a bone sauter in my wardrobe beside the bed. I can mend it myself. It'll be knitted good as new by the time I go to Med Center." She eyed him worriedly. "I can still go to Med Center, can't I?"

He grunted. "I gave you my word, did I not?"

"Good," she smiled to herself, taking the bone sautering instrument he pulled out of the wardrobe and examining the tender area with experienced fingers. "It's not that bad. Just a hairline fracture."

"How would you know, woman," he asked irritably, watching her as she knelt on the bed, running the device over the bone, repairing the-the damage he had done to her. He nearly hissed aloud, furious at himself for the unnerving shudder that ripped through him each time she winced. She blinked at him in surprise.

"Vegita…You've broken my ribs more times than I can count. Just from holding me too tightly. A couple of times while you were asleep. This is the first time you've ever noticed." He swallowed hard against the icy coolness in her voice, growling again with barely checked rage as his stomach twisted in a slow rolling somersault. What the fuck was wrong with him?! She was a bed slave! A whore! To be used up at his pleasure and thrown away when he tired of her! To-to be-

But she winced again as she probed the skin over the newly healed bone, that would still be sensitive, still painful for several hours after knitting, and a vivid stab of sense memory swept through him. The sense of tearing agony as Jeiyce had shattered his own ribs to splinters, ramming the shards into his lungs like shrapnel with a second blow, all the while holding Vegita helpless, pinned by the Red Prince's greater strength. She raised her eyes again to meet his, and looked startled by what she saw there. How many times, he wondered, even after she had begun to submit to him, had he broken her bones without realizing it, and continued on through the night oblivious to her injuries?

"It's not as bad as your injuries were," she said, reading his mind apparently.

"Have I ever-?" He stopped the words before he uttered them, clamping his teeth down over them with a hiss of fury. At himself for having spoken, at her for being so damnably frail of body, for making him wrench internally at the thought of having damaged a creature as lowly and unimportant as herself.

"Never as bad as Jeiyce hurt you," she answered the question he had only half spoken, again seeing into his thoughts with no effort.

_You're half-way there already,_ she had said.

No!

And no and no and no! His father's warnings were the ravings of a man whose blood had run cold for women since the death of Vegita's mother. He was the master here! He bared his teeth, and pulled her body roughly against his, making her yelp in pain. He set his jaw against the knot in his gut and growled murderously into her face. "Do you think I give a damn about you?! You live and continue to live for my pleasure. You are nothing outside of that! You are my whore until I see fit to have done with you, and nothing more! Nothing more!"

"Which one of us are you trying to convince, Vegita?" She asked, blue eyes burning mockingly into his as he threw he down and shoved her legs roughly apart.

"Woman," he rasped softly, his mouth against hers. "I do not give a damn about you."

Her lips curled in a smile so evil it would have made a prince of Hell sigh with adoration. "Yes, you do." She hooked her legs around his hips and pulled him deep inside her, and he choked on an answering cry of pain that echoed hers. His body, independent of his will, drove into her sweet warmth again and again, while his soul seemed to writhe on a bed of coals each time she gasped, every time her beautiful face cinched up in pain as he battered the newly healed bone in her ribcage with each thrust. He came in less than a minute, like an unschooled virgin boy, and she shrieked out as she finished with him, her cries a sickening mix of pleasure and agony.

"I will win this game of yours, woman," he managed to husk in her ear after a moment, still gasping like a drowning swimmer. "I will make you adore me, fawn upon me, give me every piece of yourself that you have held back, until I own you. All of you, body and soul! I will make you-" But the word clogged in his throat.

She brushed his lips with hers, delicate fingers caressing his sweating brow. "Love you?" Her soft laughter was sweet and cruel. "You don't know how, Vegita. You can't even make yourself say the word. You don't know how to fight a battle that doesn't involve brute strength and fighting power. I do. You're going to lose this little war, my beautiful Prince. And when you do, you'll be the one who is enslaved."

That wild, anticipatory thrill of a challenge, of a new and delicious sort of battle, began to fill him again, and he returned her kiss, slow and deep. "We shall see," he said. He withdrew from her gently, eased her up on her feet as though she were made of delicate cobweb strands. He began pulling on his clothes, slowly helping her do the same, noting the red marks on her flawless skin, already mottling to angry bruises. There would be no victory in his future if he continued to-to hurt her like this.

"My word to you, woman," he said softly. "You will not receive so much as a bruise from my hands hereafter."

He left before she could answer. It was past time for him to train.

He trained. Day and into the night, pummeling his flesh and breaking his bones in the high gravity domes the Madrani techs began to build and rebuild in a constant state of frantic construction, so that he would immediately have a new dome to demolish each time he shattered the last. They knew their lives depended on it. The only thing he lacked, burned for in a constant rage of frustration, was a sparring partner to equal his own strength. He went through the databases of fighting power counters for every warrior in the Empire, looking for someone, anyone that even came close. There was no one. He began searching Mousrom's records of captives held at Kharda city. There were some Maiyosh-jin with untapped potential to be very, very strong fighters, but the Red Prince's people were not warriors by nature. Jeiyce was an apparent anomaly among the sons of his race. He could have had these men trained to fight, whipped into shape to become amazingly powerful sparring partners...in the space of a year or two perhaps. But he did not have that much time. He began searching even the slave records each night before he slept. At long last, he found something. A possibility anyway. A mercenary type taken in a raid decades ago during his father's wars of conquest. It was easy to see why the big, lumbering fool had been spared the death that had greeted most higher powered captives in those days.

The man was just short of having been disqualified as sentient life in the brains department. He had spent the better part of the last two decades as a dock porter, but in his youth had been a mercenary in the service of Tsiru-sei. The big moron had not lifted a hand in violence for twenty years, he told Vegita sadly. But even a man as slow-witted as this one would soon remember the training of his soldiering days if properly motivated. Rikkuum, Vegita soon learned, was more than eager to become sparring partner to the Saiyan no Ouji, and lacked the native intelligence to fear having been selected for a duty that no Saiyan warrior had ever survived more than a few weeks. To his delight, Vegita soon found out why. The man was monstrously powerful, and faster than any being so large and lumbering should be.

In their first bout, the big bastard side-stepped Vegita's head-on attack and nearly cold cocked his master in one, hamfisted blow. Vegita staggered back, and roared with rage, firing a blast at the man that should have left him a smoldering pile of ash. Rikkuum blocked it easily and sprang forward again, catching the prince with an upper cut jab...and knocked the Saiyan no Ouji on his royal backside. He stood watching Vegita rise painful to his feet, and blinked amiably at the murderous expression on the Saiyan's face.

"This is what you require, Ouji-sama?"

Vegita stared at the giant man, this mountain of fighting strength that had lain fallow, untapped and unknown for 20 years. He had, by some benevolent miracle, stumbled onto exactly what he needed. Someone who would beat him to a pulp each day from morning to night, increasing his strength, speed and stamina with each new bout. He went to his bed that night, aching and shaky from a half hour in a regen tank and more content than he had been since the battle on Shikaji.

And each night, he returned home to besiege his woman in a new round of the merry war they had begun. He gave her utter autonomy to come and go as she would and to order all things in his household as though she were its mistress. He now realized that the gifts of clothing and luxuriant niceties had been tossed aside with nothing more than a cursory word of thanks from her. That freedom, or its closest simulation, was a thing she truly craved. She cleared out a spare room in the villa and moved a small mountain of medical texts, machines and engineering equipment into it in the space of an afternoon, and he soon became accustomed to seeking her in that "workshop" each time he returned home.

She in turn, showered him with affection and worked his exhausted, sore body to its limits each night, doing things to him that made it difficult to concentrate the next day if he thought on them overlong, that forced him to discipline himself sternly not to hurry through his training so that he might return to her again all the quicker.

But each evening at table, after his mocking courtesy and her sweet false submissiveness had waned, he saw a little more of the woman he sought to draw out. He slowly came to realize that she could debate him to the wall on any subject he cared to name, on things as diverse as hyper drive mechanics and Saiyan pre-interstellar history. The more he let her see that she might speak her mind uncensored-though he had to bite his tongue to keep from doing so a dozen times a night-the more she showed him her true self. And the more spellbound he became, by each mercurial flicker of wit, temper and intellect. He own tactic-to simply give her more and more freedom until her gratitude for all he had given her warmed her heart and melted it into his hands-seemed to be working, though slowly. He had assumed initially that her strategy was to bed him as well and creatively as his schedule allowed, but…He began to wonder if the simple act of showing him who she truly was might not be some sort of subtle on his heart assault as well.

"How many others like Rikkuum do you think there are, Ottoussama?" Vegita asked his father after the King had summoned him one morning. The word on his constant use of the tanks, nearly every day now, as Rikkuum continued to happily pound him into tenderized meat each time they fought, had reached his father's ears. "Men that strong, who slipped past our purges of all the strongest races. Men with both intelligence and fighting power."

"It is a big galaxy, boy," his father answered pensively. "More than we imagine. You are thinking that if you could find this Rikkuum so easily, what manner of fighting power has the Red Prince managed to amass in his followers?"

"If he had 100 such men, he would be unstoppable," Vegita said soberly. "He could mount a successful siege of Vegita-sei itself."

"You are beginning to think like a king," his father chuckled. "Now you know why I rarely sleep more than an hour a night. I must contemplate this and every other potential situation that might threaten this world and our people, and try to form a plan to avert it should that situation arise." His father smiled grimly. "You have been so caught up in your training that you did not notice the orbital moon baubles that Bardock and his weapons squad have been launching over the last few days. There are even more on the ground to be sent up in the event of attack. Let the Red Demons try their hand against an entire planet full of enraged Oozaru if they will." Ottoussama bid him a good-humored farewell and left for Taldai, Vegita-sei nearest neighboring solar system, to spend the day forcibly galvanizing the ship foundry there into completing Vegita-sei's new fleet ahead of schedule.

By noon, he stood over the bleeding, unconscious body of Rikkuum, winded, bloody himself, but very pleased. This was the first time he had put the big man down before midday. He went out into the sun, commanding the medics who hovered on the edge of his training dome to see to the man, and the palace cooks to bring his lunch outside. He stepped out into the bright light of day, squinting upward at the giant troop carrier that seemed to be listing horribly to port as it set down on the upper launch pad of Med Center with a resounding metallic thud. An instant later, an alarm claxon began to shrill throughout the Capital, but Vegita was already moving. He set down at Med Center in the midst of an insect hive of running men and women. He caught sight of a familiar face, standing beneath the under belly of the carrier. Bardock. The man was easing his shoulder out from under the hull, shouting at the warriors around him to get inside.

"What the hell is this?!" Vegita barked out.

"We were working on a moon bauble array for your father, Ouji-sama," Bardock said, breathing heavily. "The carrier came down out of space like a rock. We couldn't raise the bridge on our scouters, so we just grabbed it and set it down here. It looks like its taken heavy fire. There are score marks all over-"

"Ouji-sama!" A tall, lanky man, one of Bardock's warriors, came tearing out of the carrier. "The carrier is from Ansou-sei! The pilots say the garrisons there were hit by the Maiyosh-jin this morning. They fired some sort of magnetic disruption blast that fragged all their communications equipment. The men inside said that this is the first of ten carriers, all bearing Saiyan wounded!" As the man spoke, a rush of stretcher bearers began loading the first of the wounded warriors from the ship. Or what was left of them.

"Get the armor off these men now!" The Madrani Scopa was shouting like a squad commander in the field, barking out orders to his own staff and the Saiyans that were now rushing in from all parts of the Capital, responding to the alarm. The bio-monitor in the doctor's hand was screaming like a dying bird. "The armor's hot! Bulma!" His woman was there at the Madrani's side, carrying a med satchel that was nearly as big as she was. "Set up a rad inoculation triage right here, both for the wounded and the men going inside the ship-" His eyes lit on Vegita, and he raced over, eyes frantic. "Ouji-sama! I must humbly ask you-"

"These are my warriors, doctor," Vegita snapped. "What do they need?"

"Their armor is irradiated, Ouji-sama! It must be disposed of quickly-off planet. The ship is hot as well. From the looks of the wounded, the Maiyosh-jin must have used plasma atomics!"

Vegita cursed viscously. The honorless cowards! The doctor was right. The plasma missiles would have cut through a Saiyan's Ki shield like a knife through new bread. And melted the men's flesh inside their own armor. "All the other troop transports that will be arriving in the next few hours will be hot as well. I can cure rad poisoning with an injection, my prince, but if we let the crippled carriers land, or worse, if they break up as they try to land, they could irradiate the entire Capital! Ouji-sama, I cannot give orders to Saiyan warriors, but you can!"

"We will empty this carrier, then launch it into the sun," Vegita said quickly. "I will set warriors to physically hold the other carriers in position just inside the atmosphere, while others ferry the wounded down to you. Then we will hurl those carriers into the sun as well. Captain!"

"My Prince?" Bardock barked out smartly. Vegita did not miss the man smooth out the hearty dislike from his face. Raditz' father was an insolent bastard, he thought grimly. But he was also a very bright, capable bastard. "Take command of the men emptying this transport, and all the others that arrive. I will marshal the stronger Elites to catch the ships as they arrive and hold them in place while you pull the wounded out."

"Bardock!" Bulma caught the warrior's arm. "Wasn't Romayna stationed on Ansou-sei?" Bardock nodded shortly, his eyes softening as they fell on the girl's pale, worried face.

"Don't fret for her, brat," he said with a grim, tense grin. "She is strong and clever. She will have survived." He wheeled away and began shouting orders at his own squad and dozens of others.

Vegita didn't pause to reflect on that strange exchange, or the squad captain's oddly affectionate manner toward the young woman who hated him so deeply. There was no time. He began to shout out orders to the Elites that were beginning to cluster around him, anxious for orders.

The whole of that long, mad day was a blur in his mind ever after. He rallied and organized both the soldiers and slaves that poured into the medical quarter as the day wore on and streamed in from the surrounding countryside to aid in porting the wounded to the surface. Once each transport was empty, the teams of stronger warriors hovering below the ship, faces straining with effort from holding the great weight steady, sometimes for several hours, would gather the last of their combined strength to shove the carriers out of the atmosphere and into the sun's gravitational pull . And by the time each ship was ditched, another transport would arrive. The faces of the Saiyan soldiers, some twisted in agony or burnt beyond recognition, all spitting gouts of blood from blistered lips as the poison of the rad plasma ate them alive from inside-all these images began to burn inside Vegita's mind. He knew they would stay firmly etched there all his days. He thought he had felt anger when Jeiyce of Maiyosh had beaten him down, but now he realized he had never known true fury until this day. He might have killed any one of these men in tournament without a second thought. He did not value a single one of them personally. But they were _his._ His soldiers, his people, all sons of Vegita-sei. A half million troops cut down in a single bombing strike. The enemy had used the cruelest, most cowardly far range weapon known to sentient life. Plasma atomics. Cruel because it killed the bulk of its victims slowly. Cowardly because the soldiers on the surface had been given no chance to fight back. The missiles had struck the garrison bases without warning in the dead of night.

As each carrier was hurled into the sun, the men beside him would fall away, dropping down in exhaustion from effort and rad exposure. The flushed, unhealthy visages of the Elites around him told Vegita that having over-taxed their fighting powers was not causing collapse so much as the fact that they were being poisoned themselves. He passed the command down through Bardock and his squad members that each man bracing the carriers should drop down to Med Center himself for a rad inoculation the instant he began to feel weak. Vegita himself felt nothing. He held onto his rage throughout that long day, unable to release it, unable to allow himself to stop and rest until all his warriors, _his_ warriors, were on the surface. He did not know if it was adrenaline or his own Ki shield, drawn from a fighting power so many times greater than any of the men around him, that kept the sickness at bay for him. But as the last carrier spun upward in a whirling silhouette into the sun, a wave of weak, sickened nausea rose up and pulled him down into darkness.

"Young fool," a familiar voice said gruffly. He opened his eyes to see his father standing by his bed, arms folded. "You are a man, you young idiot! Not a god. Nor are you the Legendary reborn to us again…yet. Did you think your royal blood a sufficient shield against plasma radiation?" The king shook his head angrily. "Come to me when you are fit to fly, boy. We must talk of what to do next."

Vegita nodded silently, and his father seemed to fade into a bank of mist. The sound of his woman's voice, weeping softly, brought him back to full consciousness. She was a few meters away in the crowded recovery ward, bent over the body, horribly burned and still horribly alive, of a Saiyan woman, her slim shoulders shaking with grief.

"Do not dishonor her death with tears, daughter," Bardock told her softly. His voice sounded broken, as though the man were choking on shards of glass.

"Let her weep," the dying woman whispered. "She is neither Saiyan nor a warrior…though only for want of fighting power. I…knew you would survive when Raditz and the babe were slain."

A coughing rasp of a chuckle. "Tell me, Bulma…have you bent the Saiyan no Ouji to your will as completely as you did my firstborn?"

"Romayna-san…" The younger woman's voice was a soft sob.

"I think…he will learn that it was folly to make an enemy of you before the last dance is done. All my goods and chattels I bequeath to you, girl. And what lies safe in the incu-ward below us as well…to ease your grief."

"Romayna," Bardock said. "The girl is not her own mistress. All you will to her, you give to the man who slew Raditz."

"Bar-kun…" A long labored breath in the woman's half-melted lungs. "Nothing is forgiven, beloved. Not yet. You have not yet earned it. You will know when you have…But I will not look on you as I die. Go." Bardock uttered a low, choking growl that was more than half a sob, though his face remained impassive. He turned without another word and left the two women to themselves. Bardock's mate began to speak softly to the Chikyuu woman, too softly for Vegita to hear the words. He slept again.

His eyes snapped open and he sat up in the silent recovery ward, easing himself slowly to his feet. It was morning, though of what day he wasn't sure. He could feel his body growing stronger by the minute, telling him more accurately than any physician that he had rested long enough. He caught sight of the Madrani doctor Scopa as he made his way out of the complex, and smirked. The man was lying on his face on an unoccupied gurney, snoring softly. Let the fellow sleep, Vegita thought. The weakling had earned it. He found his father cloistered with the entirety of the Privy Council, huddled around a halo star chart.

"Are you fit for battle?" His father said without preamble as Vegita entered the chamber.

"I am more than fit, Ottoussama," Vegita snarled softly.

The king nodded curtly. "The whole planet is buzzing with word of your doings yesterday. Medical managed to save more than a third of the wounded. It would have been more, but you gave the surgeons leave to let those who would have lived as cripples die with honor. A merciful command, boy." The note of pride in those abrupt words sent a faint tremor of warmth through Vegita's still shaky body. "Intelligence has given us a list of targets known now to harbor Maiyosh-jin rebels and civilians, or to have had dealings with them in the past. At this juncture, it's all one. We will kill their race, all their kind, wherever we find them. To this list, I have added several dozen more worlds, all high profile hubs and space ports of interstellar travel. You will take ten thousand warriors in ten troop carriers and wage a campaign of annihilation against these worlds. Where it is feasible, take any Maiyosh-jin you find alive, to be returned to Vegita-sei and put to questioning."

"This is a campaign of terror," Vegita said, surveying the targets red-marked for destruction on the star chart. They were all dispersed evenly throughout each quadrant of Imperial Saiyan space, so that every part of the Empire might feel the sting of reprimand. "By your leave, Ottoussama, I will wait three days between each purge. Beginning with the third or forth world on this list, I will send a wave comm message to the surface informing the leaders and general populace that if they give up information concerning the Red Prince or the location of any hidden colonies of Maiyosh-jin, they will be spared."

Articha nodded to his father. "It is sound strategy, Sire. And if he strikes at the same hour, every three days, it will put the entire Empire in a panic, each world wondering if they will be next."

"A good plan," his father said. "You will take Articha along as your field marshal, boy. You leave tomorrow."

"But before you depart, Ouji-sama," Mousrom's piggy eyes bore no hint of insolence, but Vegita could feel angry spite rolling off the fat man in waves. "You should see the crux of the enemy's new 'weapon'. It allowed the Red Demons to launch plasma nukes through our sensors nets undetected. This is a fairly innocuous example of the technology." The Inquisitor lay a thumb sized pellet on the council table, pressing a tiny catch on its side. The pellet 'popped' in a burst of metallic scented smoke. And a full mini-surgery satchel appeared from nowhere, spread across half the table. "It is a kind of miniaturization science we have never seen, Ouji-sama. My weapons teams have not been able to replicate it, but they say there is no limit to the size or variety of its scope. The Maiyosh-jin used this technology to miniaturize their plasma torpedoes that must have been timed to 'expand' just before they struck the surface of Ansou-sei. I also believe it is how the Maiyosh-jin populated worlds were able to evacuate in the space of a day. The possibilities are endless. Ships, food, medical supplies, housing…weapons. And…" The man's eyes glittered in ugly anticipation. "I have learned something in the last hour that may alter your majesty's benevolent policies toward the slave population of Vegita-sei. This morning, one of our Maiyosh-jin captives led me to a technical slave who toiled in the palace itself.

In the slave's rooms, we found this." Mousrom laid another pellet, identical to the first, on the table, and paused for dramatic effect.

"We must face the very real possibility of a slave network in league with the Red Prince here on Vegita-sei. The potential for terrorism on our own soil is one we cannot ignore, Ou-sama."

"What remedy would you suggest?" Ottoussama said quietly in the sudden cold silence.

"A clean sweep, Sire," Mousrom said eagerly. "Either execute or rotate off world all the general labor slaves. And I would ask leave to put to question selected segments of the more intelligent, highly skilled slaves and free alien residents here in the Capital. Especially those whose duties require them to travel off world, or give them access to those who do."

"Yesterday, I would have agreed with you," Vegita said, eyeing the man with open disgust. "And seen no harm in letting you gut the every slave and freedman on the planet until you sated even your apparently unquenchable taste for torture." An almost inaudible chuckle escaped Turna. "How skilled are you at medicine, Mousrom-san?" Vegita drawled. "Without the slaves and freedmen in Medical, our losses would have been 90% yesterday, not a 'mere' two thirds. When our soldiers die by the tens of thousands after you have depleted our slave population of its medical staff, I will send their mates and heirs to your doorstep to ask for a blood price."

His father cut off whatever reply the seething, red-faced Inquisitor might have made. "Seek out this 'red network' in your conventional manner, Mousrom. There will be no wholesale purge and torture of Vegita-sei's homeworld slaves until you show me they are all in league with the enemy. The boy is right. We will weaken ourselves greatly if we put our labor force to the sword."

"Or the wrack," Articha murmured. "The slaves at Med Center and the Capital at large showed great loyalty to their masters yesterday. Your tactics would drive them into the arms of the Red Prince."

"I-I beg your pardon, Ou-sama," Mousrom said solicitously. He cut his eyes back to Vegita, full of veiled malice. "And yours, Ouji-sama. I am guilty of presumption in my zealous wish to serve you. I will continue as you have previously bade me proceed. I will only arrest and question those slaves whom I have just reason to suspect. Both those slaves in the general populace…and those in Med Center, for whom you have such a great affection, Oujisama." There were several levels of barbed threat and insinuation in those words. Vegita regarded the Inquisitor coldly, dropping all pretense of civility.

"Take care, fat man," he said softly. "If you over-step your station, you may trip and fall."

"Enough," his father said irritably. "Try not to goad the boy into killing you, Mousrom. I can little afford to lose your services on the eve of all out war." Vegita took the point as well, and hung back after the others had departed, arms folded over his chest, glowering down at his feet in suppressed rage. The Inquisitor well knew his woman was now apprenticed to Scopa at Med Center. Mousrom had given his father the information in fact. Would the Intelligence Minister truly have the suicidal gaul to strike at Vegita through his woman, Mousrom's petty revenge for past and present insults? Trump up some suspicion surrounding her, then….then take her to his torturer's nest in the north while Vegita was away at war? And when he returned, the deed would have been done, his woman's fragile, defenseless body torn to pieces upon Mousrom's twisted machines. However long Vegita took killing the misshapen Inquisitor would not matter then. No amount of revenge would bring her back after she was dead.

"Heed Articha's experience on the field, boy." His father's voice cut through the worried, angry run of his thoughts. Vegita regarded the other man's face, so much like his own, though harder and no longer young. "Your strength is great, but even a large predator may be over-whelmed by an army of stinging insects...and these insects will soon rise against us by the trillions. It is the nature of every living thing, however weak and lowly, to wish to be free."

"Those trillions you speak of need a focal point to look to and to lead them," Vegita said softly. "Without it they are nothing more than stampeding live stock, a directionless mob at best. Jeiyce is that symbol for our enemies. When I crush him, they will be lost."

"They will be lost," his father agreed, but his perpetual frown sank even deeper. "But a mob set in motion is a force of nature. They will not cease their struggles when you have slain Jeiyce of Maiyosh. This rebellion will be long and bitter in putting down. But...it is good that our warriors have a symbol of their own. After yesterday, our troops would cheerfully follow you to lay siege to Hell if you commanded them. It is good that you have learned a lesson I despaired of you ever truly understanding." His father's face remained hard as granite, but the cold black eyes warmed again with pride. "That our warriors, our people, are yours. To command, to rule...and to protect. And as their lord, you are theirs as well."

He spent the day making ready, assembling and organizing his ships, his men, his supplies, caught up in an almost unbearable feeling of childlike excitement. At every step of the way, Articha hovered silent and steady at his shoulder, voicing neither approval nor disapproval at any decision he made until all was in readiness.

"You have a gift for leading men, and a knack for organization, Ouji-sama," she said curtly.

High praise indeed from Articha. He began to realize the reason why he liked the normally taciturn woman, why he would have chosen her himself had his father not commanded her to advise him in this campaign. She was blunt and utterly honest, a rare thing even among the Royal Councilors, and would not keep silent where she felt he had fallen short, or praise him for anything less than excellence.

Late in the evening, he flew back to his hillside villa, scanning for the tiny, but distinct Ki that should have lain sleeping within. He wheeled about with an annoyed curse, burning back in the direction of Med Center. What the hell was the woman still doing there this late? Gossiping with her girlfriend Scopa? He barged rudely into the main infirmary, still overflowing with wounded, and was greeted by a pale-faced Scopa. The amber-skinned man, so calm and professional as he had orchestrated the treatment of more than 100, 000 wounded, seemed on the point of tears.

"Where is my woman?!" He snapped angrily. But something in the man's face stilled the annoyance he was feeling, and froze into something that bordered on fear. _Mousrom..._

"Did they take her? The Inquisitors?!"

The Madrani shook his head in mild confusion at the question. "No. I took a short nap in the wee hours this morning when things began to calm down…I left her sleeping near your bedside. But…Oh gods, Ouji-sama! I beg you…I _beg_ you, think a bit before you act in this matter!"

"What the hell are you talking about, you fool?!"

"She is below, Ouji-sama," the doctor said softly. "In the incu-ward."

The incu-ward. The endless subterranean warehouse of incubators housed beneath Med Center, where Saiyan embryos were placed to grow to viability…Vegita felt the lump of ice in his chest grow colder still.

"Show me," he said curtly.

He followed the Madrani to the lift that led down to what was the largest storage facility of infants in the Empire, through half lit corridors of sleeping brats in all stages of development, to a wing that seemed to house the children ready for emergence. Ready to be sent to the infant barracks for aggression conditioning if their Ki was acceptably high, or tossed to an uncertain fate in the pod seeding unit of they were weak. She was sitting on the floor beside an open incubator, rocking a naked babe in her arms, smiling and weeping at the same time. A few feet from her, Bardock knelt, still in the blood smeared armor he had worn the day before, speaking to her in soft, soothing tones. She did not seem to hear him or even notice the man's presence. Bardock turned as Vegita and Scopa approached, edging back from the woman slowly, his movements leaden as though his limbs were weighted.

"One of you will explain this to me now!" Vegita hissed softly, his eyes locked on the woman's face, her fragile smile as she looked down at the boy in her arms.

"The boy is my son, Ouji-sama," Bardock said in a hushed voice. "My-my mate discovered herself with child six years ago, and put the embryo in cry-storage. When we found ourselves suddenly without an heir a year ago, she had him unfrozen and placed in an incu-pod." Vegita narrowed his eyes balefully at the couched reference to Raditz' death, but kept silent as the man continued. "Romayna and I were estranged, and she-she had a particular fondness for the Chikyuu girl. She willed the boy to Bulma on her deathbed, Ouji-sama."

"My Prince..." The doctor said tremulously. "I would implore you as her physician to tread lightly here..."

"He's trying to tell you," Bardock whispered harshly, "that if you snatch the brat from her arms, her mind will most likely snap. Permanently." The man's brows drew together in a frown of open disgust. "And you'll lose your favorite fuck toy for good."

Vegita's hand was around Bardock's throat before he even finished the sentence. He would have snapped the bastard's neck in another second, but a low cry from the woman made him turn. She was on her feet now, staring at him in absolute horror, clutching the baby to her chest. Then she wheeled and ran, tearing down the pitch black corridor, sobbing with terror. He shot forward and caught her lightly in his arms an instant before she would have gone tumbling headfirst dark a dark stairway. She began shrieking incoherently, trying to keep the boy away from him, as he shook her gently, trying to make her hear him.

"I will not harm him, Bulma!" He finally roared, his voice rising over her screams. She went immobile almost instantly, staring at him wide-eyed. Then...she began to collapse in his arms, sinking slowly her knees before him while he stared down at her in shock.

"Please...Please, Vegita...Oh gods, please let me keep him! I'll do anything...Anything! Please don't take him away from me again!"

The two fools rushing behind him in the darkness had been right, he thought numbly. What he did and said in the next few moments might very well mean the loss of her. "Woman..." He said slowly, carefully. "This is not the same boy."

"I don't care!" She wailed. "Please...oh, Kami, please..." Her voice tapered off into a low moan. She sounded like a damned soul begging for mercy on the threshold of Hell...and expecting none. He swallowed his anger at the dead woman who had put them both in this situation, trying to think, trying to reason out a solution that would not leave her mad. But he would be damned to a coward's hell himself before he fostered any whelp of Bardock in his own household! He would not-

There was a solution. "Keep the brat here," he said finally, watching the hope that dawned in her eyes with a small internal smile. This would go a long way to winning the little war he and she had been waging during the last weeks. "I will not have the son of Bardock sleeping under my roof. But you may keep him at Med Center. Scopa will attend him at night. Will you not, doctor?"

"With all my heart, Ouji-sama," the Madrani whispered.

"You understand that he must go to the children's barracks at four year of age?" Vegita asked sternly. She nodded reluctantly. "It is done then. I am leaving Vegita-sei in the morning to hunt the Red Prince, and to give our enemies an answer to their attack yesterday. It may be months before I return. You will dwell here at Med Center while I am gone. Keep the boy by your side night and day if you wish."

"Vegita..." She sighed softly, unable to speak more.

He turned to glare at Bardock. "You are familiar with Mousrom of Intelligence?" The warrior nodded shortly, and the Madrani gasped softly at the mention of that name. "He is not my friend, and may try to avenge himself upon me in some spiteful way while I am off planet." Bardock's eyes cut to the woman in grim understanding. Vegita did not like this man, would have killed him out of hand for the words he had spoken moments ago were he not such a strong clever soldier. And Vegita-sei needed all her strong soldiers now. Every single one of them.

_Daughter,_ Bardock had called the girl as she wept over the body of his dying mate. As a man would address his son's bride. For whatever reason, he looked upon her as a man looked upon a woman of his own blood. He would not desire her for his own. In fact, if the man held true to the bent of most Saiyan widowers, Vegita's own father included, he would probably never desire another woman again after the death of his mate. Bardock was not a man Vegita would ever willingly trust with his own life. But somehow, Vegita knew the man would give his life to protect Bulma. And for all the want of a single drop of noble blood, he was stronger than most Elites.

"I appoint you my chatelain in my absence, Bardock. Watch over all that is mine, guard it with your life if you must, until I return. Do not leave her side. And if the Inquisitors come for her with some convenient bit of manufactured suspicion, I command you to kill them in my name, and hide her away in the back country until I return."

"I will do all these things to the last of my strength, Ouji-sama," Bardock growled softly.

An hour later, Bulma had nested the boy in a set of rooms Scopa had given her in Med Center's residential wing. She turned to Vegita, and drew him to the little apartment's narrow bed, her eyes shining with standing tears. It had not struck him until this moment that he would not see her again for months. The thought seemed to wrench at him in some empty, lost fashion. Months until he touched her again, held her, heard the sound of her voice.

She leaned down and kissed him lightly, and one bright tear escaped, rolling slowly down one perfect cheek. He cupped her face in his hand and wiped it away.

"I have seen you weep in sorrow, anger and joy," he said softly. "Which is it now?"

"All three," she whispered. "And one thing more." She kissed him deeper this time, her damp eyes beginning to burn with desire.

"Thankfulness."

For three months, he burned and butchered, and was occasionally blessed with a stand up fight. In addition to the fixed relation targets, they managed to rout out four separate Maiyosh-jin nests on uncharted worlds. The locations had been given up with great eagerness by worlds anxious to save their own hides. It was amazing and unnerving, however, just how many of the enemy strongholds held firm and refused to talk. Only three worlds of the first twenty his fleet laid siege to in those first weeks had given over their loyalty to the Red Prince in the blind terror of staring the end of their world in the face. None of these worlds yielded a scrap of information as to the whereabouts of Jeiyce himself.

On each world that collaborated and led him to a nest of Maiyosh-jin rebels, he left behind a garrison of a thousand soldiers to hold the planet under martial law. This he did to better motivate the next world his forces called upon. If they knew that the Saiyan no Ouji would remain true to his word and spare their worlds should they talk, each new system would be far more likely to spill all they knew to save themselves.

On the sixth week of his campaign, they struck such a Maiyosh-jin colony. And found something new. The base was more of a hidden bunker, comprised of more than 90% non-combatants. Children and weaklings, in other words. He hung behind in his flagship while he sent ten squads to blast everything that stirred on the planet below, fulfilling his father's command to utterly exterminate the Maiyosh-jin as a race. He had grown to detest these kinds of raids. There was no challenge and no honor to be found in mass butchery of enemies who could not defend themselves. It was demeaning to a true warrior, and abysmally boring. Like hunting squealing, toothless game. The clarion call came in less than twenty minutes after the battalion made planetfall, a choked, guttural cry over a comm link that made no sense.

"Can't fly...can't see...Everywhere!"

Vegita slammed his fist through the comm console and whirled, heading for the lift that led to the drop hatch in the belly of the ship, with Articha bitching at him every step of the way.

"Ouji-sama, this is an unknown situation!" She said harshly. "You cannot rush headlong into the face of what may be another volley of plasma nukes or some even more deadly technology!"

"Our scanners detected no radiation signatures on the surface," he snapped. "I will not sit idly by while my men are gutted!"

Seven minutes. It could not have taken him an instant longer to arrive at the scene of the battle that was already over. And he found that the enemy, an undefended colony of babes, geriatrics and weaklings, had slaughtered all but a handful of the seventy warriors sent to dispatch them. And then simply vanished. Or so he thought, until the call came from the bridge of his point troop carrier, crackling inside his scouter through a wedge of static. The scanners had picked up a hyper light signature. Then another...then another. Ships jumping to hyper light speed all around his fleet, whipping past them unseen by the eye or his ships' scouting equipment.

He roared with rage like a maddened Oozaru, blasting the world beneath him to smoldering grist as the Elites from his own royal squad dodged back from his anger, bearing the few, bloody survivors from the ground before Vegita set the planet's atmosphere alight with a heat blast, flash frying the world and everything on it, still spitting with fury.

He was no calmer as he watched the medics labor ever the half dozen men who had survived the ambush, not one of whom looked as though he would survive the night.

"What manner of weapon did they use, soldier?" He asked the bloody squad commander on the surgery bed. The man looked to be in better shape than any of his fellows.

"Never saw, my prince...Invisible..." The warrior whispered. "Hit us...looked like a simple beam cannon blast. Nobody even thought to dodge. It was like...having your Ki ripped out of your head. We fell out of the sky...couldn't fly. And then the old men and brats took us out with blaster rifles." He laughed weakly. "Clever little bastards..." His eyes lost focus and his breath stopped.

Vegita cursed softly. His rage had burned down into something calm, cold and deadly. He had been played for a fool. He had been defeated...again.

"The pellets again," Articha muttered, almost under her breath. He glanced at her sharply. "That is why we detected no ships on approach," she went on urgently. "They must have had an escape contingent of ships hidden with that miniaturization technology. And now it seems those pellets were not the end of their new technology."

"Invisibility shields," Vegita snarled. "And...Ki rupturing weapons."

"It is not good," she said grimly. "I have never seen such a thing. Though when I was a girl, men said that the Tsiru-jin had something similar. A thing that could shield a warrior from his own Ki, and render him helpless. We must inform your father of this new weapon, Ouji-sama."

"Send out a hyper wave message to all our garrisons and colony worlds," Vegita added, as a cold thought struck him. "It is good that the bulk of our off world Saiyan colonies are moon locked worlds. Oozaru strength does not need Ki."

Articha paled slightly. "But the change dulls the wits. And a soldier cannot easily fight what he cannot see."

"Mousrom says there are whispers of some secret 'mastertech'," his father told him an hour later as he sat before the hyper wave screen, frowning at the fuzzy image of the king's glowering face. "Whoever he is, he is well-hidden. Not a breath of a whisper as to the location or identity of this mysterious weapons wright had reached the ears of Intelligence. I suspect we will find him when we find the Red Prince. Were I Maiyosh, I would keep such a treasure close." A pause, then his father growled angrily. "I am sending 100,000 more troops to aid you in your search, boy. And another 500,000 to strengthen the off world garrisons and colonies defenses." Defenses. The very word seemed to stick in his father's throat, and brought back the mad, animal rage Vegita had felt earlier that day. Machines that put a Saiyan warrior on the defensive, that laid his fighting power to waste so completely he could be killed by a brat with a blaster rifle. Whom he could not even strike at, because he could not see them. "This is all out war now, boy," his father went on. "The thing all your generation has spent its entire life pining for is here."

"We will win," Vegita said, unaccountably unnerved by the almost imperceptible shadow of worry in his father's eyes.

"In strength alone, we are unmatchable," Ottoussama muttered, "but this is quickly becoming a war of wits and clever machines. Watch your back, boy. Your reinforcements will join you in two days time."

They sacked thirty more targets in as many days, without pausing to rest, without asking for a shred of information from those they slew. Vegita split his new armada of ships and men into six fleets, sending them to separate sections of the Empire, so that the hard hand of their Saiyan masters might be felt everywhere at once by any who would think of joining with the rebels. And as they moved from system to system like gods of death, burning everything that lay in their path, word of attacks on Saiyan outposts and Saiyan inhabited worlds came, sporadically at first, then daily. And Vegita found that he had only banked the black rage that had taken him on that nameless Maiyosh-jin base world. Each new world his forces greeted saw it flare to near madness again as he recalled how he had been played for a fool, as he pictured the hundreds of thousands, grown to millions now, of his people slain by the enemy's cowardly ambush attacks. He began to order his ships to hang high above each world, just on the cusp of space, while he personally summoned up the kind of energy blast only one in ten million Saiyan warriors could muster. _Core bomb_, the purging squads called it, a blast that sank to the center of a planet and broke it apart from the center out.

After a week of this, having calmly watched him vent his fury, Articha tactfully suggested that perhaps they should again begin to demand information from those who awaited their fates upon the planet's surface. Behind them, rose the low, viscous rumbles of his flag ship's command crew. His warriors wanted blood for blood. Three colony worlds had fallen to the enemy in the last seven days. Ten million Saiyan lives, felled by cowards hiding behind invisibility shields, their Ki laid waste, their bodies blown to bits by simple pulse cannons an instant later. But Vegita knew she spoke sense. He soon found that his month long killing spree had not been such without its tactical advantages. The very next world his fleet approached nearly fell over themselves to give him the location of three separate Maiyosh-jin bases.

They took each base with a carefully staged attack that gave the enemy no chance to bolt or prepare. No one had yet captured a live enemy, but in the heat of a pitched battle against the first of these Maiyosh-jin hideaways, Articha devised a baiting tactic, an edge to use against the unseen. The enemy could not move quickly or use Ki themselves without being detected by scouters. Firing a volley of power in the general direction that a Ki-killing blast usually yielded up a number of corpses, and blew their invisibility machines to bits along with their bodies. The scraps of the weapons, he sent to Vegita-sei to be dissected by his father's techs, but the bodies…they were not Maiyosh-jin. Not all of them. There were Serulian, Corsarians, Canid-jin, and two score other races, strewn across the charred battle fields. All bearing the devilish little invisibility belts, all wielding the 'Ki Killers', as his men had begun to call them almost fearfully.

Nine of ten worlds his fleets had fallen upon in the last weeks were taken completely at unawares. But one in ten…One in ten, they found vacated. Their entire sentient population simply fled without a trace.

"There is no way to tell where they have gone," Articha told him, her scarred face twisted in frustration she would never have displayed before his men. They had come to Avaris-sei with high hopes of finding some truly relevant information. The Avaris-jin had been mercantile allies with Maiyosh House since time out of mind. Now the two of them stood upon a mountainous peak and surveyed the ghost world and the empty city that lay spread out before them. He had wished to see this with his own eyes, had refused to believe that such a thing was possible in the space of twenty-nine hours. One day ago, this world had held a population of roughly three billion people. "There are hundreds of thousands of inhabitable worlds out there, my prince," Articha went on. "It will be like hunting a single grain of dirt in the grasslands of the Southern steppe!" She cursed softly, her long raven hair whipping in the high winds. To the east, a great storm was building. "I sometimes wonder-" She stopped herself, the strong, handsome lines of her high cheekbones drawn down in a deep frown.

"Tell me true, General," he said quietly. "What is it you wonder?"

She grinned faintly, something the older woman rarely did. "Something that is perhaps both seditious and blasphemy. I wonder if we are unwise to have held the Madrani and other craftwise races in such contempt. It is an old, old tenant of strategy to manipulate one's opponent into underestimation, and thus, over-stepping himself. " She shook her head with grim admiration. "Every battle, every war, is unique, my Prince. But I am constantly amazed how one hand, one individual, can turn the tide of any struggle. In this case, not with raw strength, but with cleverness. The master engineer the enemy harbors, this one person-who is very probably someone we would overlook as a weakling and view as no threat at all-is the true author of every loss the Empire has suffered in the last months. Whoever he or she is, this one person is a far greater threat to Vegita-sei than Jeiyce of Maiyosh will ever-" She broke off, her entire body frozen in a posture of shock, her normally impassive face paling. "Ouji-sama! We have been fools! If this master tech could devise

miniaturization pellets to fit an entire space ship in the palm of my hand, he could just as easily craft an invisibility shield to cloak an entire planet! Perhaps even the combined Ki's of the inhabitants and-!"

A thick beam of luminous energy flared to life from a hidden cradle in the valley below them, streaking upward to its target high overhead, bursting into an incandescent shower of light and noise. Then another, followed by a screaming burst of deafening static roaring through their scouters. They never had time to react. A blade of icy, numbing weakness struck them both and Vegita felt the world torn away from him.

He woke to the sound of desperate struggle and harsh male laughter. He tried to raise his head to see where he was, to see what was happening around him, but he could barely move. He was in a dark room, lying upon a cold, metallic floor in a pool of his own blood and sweat. Something icy and sickening seemed to be wrenching at the deepest part of him, tearing away his fighting power and physical strength. Somewhere nearby, he could hear Articha's voice choking and cursing, and the sound of labored breathing.

"This room is shielded by Tsiru-jin Ki-dampers, little Prince," a man's voice said lightly. "It's an old Tsiru-jin technology Maiyosh House bought off Cold-sama before the whole slithery race up and died a while back." Vegita made some sort of gasping animal noise as the face of Jeiyce of Maiyosh moved into his line of vision. "Feeling a little weak, are we?" That mocking laughter that had haunted his dreams since Shikaji rippled through the echoing walls of the dark prison.

"I will kill you!" Vegita tried to shout, but his breath failed him, along with his strength, and he collapsed back onto the floor.

"You won't do shit, boyo," Jeiyce said coldly. "You monkeys have been busy, haven't you? Must make you feel like quiet a little man to have killed nearly 50 billion people in less than four months." The man smiled amiably at him. "I won't try to make you understand. Never try to reason with drunkards or rabid animals, my foster father always said. But cheer up, laddie! You're not going to die. Neither you nor that fine looking lady general in the next cell. I'm going to use the pair of you to give your dear old dad a taste of what he's been dishing out, lo these many years. To my people. To all the peoples unfortunate to come in contact with your abomination of a race. Let him learn how it feels to have your children butchered, your women raped to death or beaten down into cringing whores, your sons tortured and broken until they grovel on their bellies like canines. I've given your companion a new occupation-battalion whore for my men. Most of them have lost their wives, mothers or daughters to Saiyan hands, one way or another. They're very anxious to return the favor." Vegita spat out a round of curses, trying to rise, trying to fling himself at the man before him. "And you, Prince Vegita…I will see you weep like a child for me to kill you. Before I'm done with you, I'll see you belly crawl and call me master like a good little slave. And when I send the two of you back to Vegita-ou, mad and broken, maybe he'll understand some small part of what he and his Master Inquisitor have done to my people!"

"Fuck…you," Vegita hissed, trying to close his ears against the noises drifting over from the next cell, the knowledge of what must be happening to Articha. That these red bastards should dishonor a warrior of Vegita-sei so-!

"Sorry," Jeiyce said. "You're not my type." His face went blank for a moment, devoid of all the false good humor. "I used to be a good man, you know. The kind of man who would have killed someone for doing what I'm about to do to you. For what my men are doing to your companion right now." Then he shrugged as though it were nothing. "Well…I guess a sentence in Hell is a small price to pay if I can wipe your race out of existence. Let's get started, shall we?"

They left no external marks on his body. No one even drew his blood…no one except Vegita himself. He did not sleep in all the time they held him in that dark metal pit, though he lost consciousness again and again. At first, anyway. After it became apparent that he was gaining some small measure of strength and mental rest each time he passed out, they began to inject him with shock stims. And even that brief oblivion was taken from him. They took his torture in shifts, around the clock. Jeiyce, a fat pinkish-orange Aquir-jin named Dodoria, and a nameless Corsarian whom Jeiyce informed him had been a doctor before a Saiyan warrior had ripped out his tongue. No sleep, no rest, no dreams…Unless he counted the hallucinations that began on his third or forth week without so much as a wink of rest.

He saw his woman most often, beautiful and warm, standing in a green field over-flowing with flowers, smiling at him distantly. Her face was like a beacon of comfort and rest that he could never seem to reach no matter how hard he tried. Sometimes his father seemed to be wandering in a fog, searching for him, calling his name…and in the end, giving him up for dead. Nappa, cold and bloodless, a gaping hole in his chest, telling him to be strong.

As the weeks began to draw out, sleepless pain and the mocking, tireless hatred of his tormentors his only companions, he began to lose touch with time and reality more and more often. Sometimes he would think he was very young, almost too young to stand unaided, and he would begin to shriek for Nappa-sensei to make the hurt stop. Just for a moment, just for half a second. But Nappa was dead, and he knew, when his senses returned, that the pain would never end.

They were terribly inventive in the things they did to him. Neural disruption shots and cerebral manipulators strapped around his chest and skull gave him the false sensation of any sort of agony within the reach of their imagination, without harming him physically in any way. With the correct sequence of brain stimulus and neuro injections, he would imagine and feel any sort of torment they could conceive of as though it were real. But as bad as it was, all this he might have born, might have fought and held firm against it. If they had only let him sleep…

Week after week, that bled into months, wore him down, frayed the edges of his sanity, and stripped away his resistance with his pride, one agonizing ounce at a time. Sometimes, in his more lucid moments, he could hear Articha's voice, growling and sobbing, mere meters away. On one occasion, he managed to raise his head enough to see her through the bars of the next cell, and he saw-he saw her, naked, pinned beneath the grinning man on top of her, her mouth a gaping, silent scream. And as he looked on, the image blurred and shifted, and…_oh gods_…And he saw himself moving upon his woman as she struggled helplessly, battering into her over and over as she tried to scream without the benefit of a voice. He rolled on his side, wretching, sobbing like a child, screaming soundlessly. His own voice had deserted him early on, as he shrieked his vocal chords to bloody shreds. Was this what it felt like to be Silenced, he wondered, shaking and curling into a ball, trying to make himself small. If he became small enough, maybe they would leave him alone.

They did not leave him alone. If anything, their efforts after that first spate of tears became more vigorous as they sensed he was approaching some sort of breaking point. They began to use other devices, new machines, that hurt in different ways. That hurt worse. That hammered through the last of his control, that left him sobbing for Nappa-sensei, for Ottoussama to come save him, to make them stopstopstop…

Jeiyce began to speak to him then, kindly, like an older warrior would speak to a young soldier he had known since boyhood. "It's not a big thing, laddie. Just a word or two, and then you can take a little rest. Wouldn't it be nice to stop all the nasty hurting and take a nice long nap?" Vegita nodded weakly. It would be nice. He couldn't think of anything nicer, in fact. "Just say it like a good lad, do as I tell you…and you can sleep." He moved his lips, trying to frame words, but no sound would come out.

"Hmm…" The Red Prince murmured. "I guess you wouldn't have much of a voice left. I've got another idea." Jeiyce told him his idea."

"Saiyan no Ouji!" Articha's voice, raw and broken, sliced through the haze around his mind. "Remember who you are!"

"Shut that bitch up!" Dodoria boomed harshly at someone he couldn't see.

Vegita drew in a deep, shaky breath…And spat in the Red Prince's face. A black boot connected with his head and he sank into blessed, blessed night.

The roused him moments later, cursing angrily. And they began again.

He held onto himself for a long time after that. Held onto his will and his pride and his hatred for them. He did not know how much longer it was. But at some point, time washed away from him. His name slipped from his grasp next, and with it his will and his memory of who he had been. In the end, there was only the pain.

And then Jeiyce told him once more what he must do to make the pain stop. To sleep. Was the smiling red man his friend, he began to wonder? He must be. He was telling him how to make the hurting go away.

"That's it, laddie," the friendly, red-skinned man told him encouragingly as he crawled inch by torturous inch to where the other man stood. "Just a little farther. You can do it." He reached his destination with a grateful sob, and did the simple task that the red-skinned man said would make everything better. He placed his lips on the shiny black boots of the Red Prince and kissed them.

He slept each night in peace. Sometimes he dreamed strange things. His master told him these were fantasies from the brain fever he had barely survived. The memory of that pain was something his very soul wanted to cringe away from. Whenever he tried to sift through those fragmented dreams, to make sense of them, the pain would come, quailing any lingering bits of curiosity. They gave him medicine daily to keep the fever from returning. It made him feel sluggish and confused, the same way the belt he wore around his waist day and night made him feel terribly weak. But it was better than the illness. Sometimes the orange man came to his cell and beat him for no reason. Sometimes others came with him. They told him he had been an evil man, a son of an evil race, and that the beatings were his just deserts, a thing he must endure. His master explained that they were teaching him to be less evil. That didn't seem to make sense, but he couldn't think clearly enough to puzzle out why. It didn't really matter though. Each night they would leave him in peace, and he would sleep until he woke feeling rested and at peace.

On the second week after the fever in his brain broke, he woke with a terrified cry as a deafening boom sounded in the sky, lighting up the night. He shrank back in his cell, listening to the noises grow louder and louder, hearing the sound of harsh shouts and running feet overhead. As he sat shivering and sobbing in the darkness, a woman's voice began to speak to him gently. To call him by a name. He shrank away from her, further into the back of his cell, away from that name and the memory of the pain that lay entwined with it. Heavy footsteps were coming down the corridor, slowing apprehensively. A moment or two of dead silence, then the sound of a man's harsh sob.

"Beloved…oh gods…"

"Turna…"The woman whispered, her voice paper thin. "Do not let them see me. I will not be pitied."

"Out!" Another man's deep voice roared. "Get the hell out of here, all of you! If one of you repeats to a living soul how we found her, I'll give the whole lot of you to Mousrom!" He shivered and whimpered faintly at the familiar sound of that voice.

"Sire…" They were right outside his cell. He scrambled back to the wall as the footsteps drew near.

"Look at me, boy," the harsh voice said. He raised his head and looked into the eyes of the bearded man who knelt before him. A spear of memory drove into his mind and with it came the pain. He shrank back and began to shriek, sobbing with terror. Strong arms caught him, held him as he tried to escape. "My son…" The man whispered, his voice unsteady. "My son…" Something struck him hard and he slept again.

"No one will see him other than the three of you," the bearded man's voice as saying somewhere through a thick fog. "I have let it be known only that he and Articha were near death when we found them. The three of you, Turna and myself alone know the full truth." A tired rumble of a sigh." He will either return to his senses or he will not. Do not leave his side, girl. I have some idea of how overly attached he was to you. Your presence may help to bring him out of this-this-"

"I won't leave him. Ou-sama," a girl's voice said softly. It was beautiful, like something he had once dreamed about.

"I will give him a month to come back to us. If he does not..." A long pause. "If he does not, I will put him down myself." A heavy, callused hand on his face, drawn through his hair, like a warm memory forgotten since earliest childhood.

Her name was Bulma and she was as beautiful as her voice. She had a baby son that she carried with her everywhere she went. Sometimes she and Bardock would argue about that. The big, frowning scar-faced warrior seemed to think she was spoiling the boy, making him dependent on her by always keeping him in her arms. Bulma gave him an odd, wary look the first time he asked if he could hold the boy himself, but slowly sat the child in his arms. He regarded the yearling baby with curiosity and a little fascination. He was sure he had never been this close to a child this young, though he could not say how he knew this. The boy stared back up at him and smiled toothlessly, and Vegita grinned back, laughing delightedly.

His name was Vegita, they told him-Bulma, Bardock, and the soft-spoken golden-skinned Doctor Scopa. He didn't remember that. He didn't remember anything at all except that it was agony whenever he tried to remember. Doctor Scopa said his mind and spirit just needed time to rest. When he was strong enough, rested enough, he would remember everything.

They were in a big house on the edge of an endless, rolling expanse of hills and grasslands that stretched out as far as the eye could see. Bardock said this was his home. Vegita thought it was beautiful and told him so. The solemn-faced soldier thanked him quietly. He seemed to avoid Vegita's company whenever it was possible, as though Vegita made him very uncomfortable, but he liked the sad-eyed man anyway.

On his tenth day in the house of Bardock, he dreamed of his forgotten past for the first time. He saw himself at the center of a hellish firestorm of violence and death, a storm of his own making. He saw himself bathed in the blood of his enemies. And with these terrifying images came the horror of a pain that was never-ending, a waking nightmare where he would never sleep again. He woke choking, his voice seizing in his throat, unable to scream or make a sound. He lay weeping softly, curled into a fetal ball in his bed, as the memory slowly receded. A soft click of the door opening, and Bulma sat down beside him, stroking his head gently until the tears stopped. He stared up at her, at her half-lit, porcelain face, and...An entirely different set of memories flooded in. If her in his arms, soft and warm and too sweet for words, as he moved within her, as he made her sigh with pleasure...

"I remember..."

"What?" She whispered quietly.

"You." He gathered his courage to ask his next question. "Were we...Are you my mate?" How painful must it be for her, if they had been wed and he didn't even remember her?

But she slowly shook her head. "No...we were...we.."

"Lovers then?" His breath seemed caught in his chest when she smiled, looking relieved. She nodded.

"Will you stay with me?" He whispered. She didn't reply, only gently disengaged herself and pulled her night shift over her head, crawling into the bed beside him. She was warm and naked, her arms wrapped around him, and she kissed him softly. She seemed to be waiting for him to do something more. His heart skipped a beat as he suddenly realized everything that 'more' might entail.

Her body felt willing and eager against his, she was almost trembling with desire for him. But…an image, another harsh flash of memory, of a Saiyan woman's face, twisted in agony and sickened shame, curdled the want building inside him. So, he only kissed her back, almost shyly. "Thank you," he said shakily. They slept.

His mind grew stronger, sharper, less childlike as the days passed. He discovered Scopa's collection of medical books and galactic histories and began to make his way slowly through the entire library. The historical accords of Vegita-sei were not a pleasant read, but he pored through the tomes end to end. This was his world, the Saiyan were his people, and he knew nothing about them accept minuscule odd bits of memory that filtered through the veil around his past. Bardock had told him what had happened to him.

He was a crown prince of his people, the heir to a great empire, and he had been leading a war against Vegita-sei's enemies. For a long while, the Empire had thought that their Maiyosh-jin enemies were moving whole worlds full of people over night. It was now known that they had used unimaginably complex halo-projection arrays couples with a new invisibility technology. They had simply lain low on most of the worlds the Saiyan's had thought vacated, and hidden, trusting the greed of Vegita-sei for rich worlds to keep the Saiyans from blowing the seemingly empty planet to bits. As they slowly acquired the resources to mass produce these defensive weapons, the Maiyosh-jin began to distribute them to their allies first, then to any world that asked. Given the window of time that the camouflage machines afforded them, most worlds managed to evacuate in reality over the space of a month or so.

Avaris-sei had been a carefully laid trap. The Red Prince-Vegita fought to keep from trembling at the sound of that name-had known through his own intelligence sources that Avaris-sei was one of Vegita's prime targets. Jeiyce had simply camped out on that camouflaged world and waited for Vegita to arrive. They had blown his war ships and troop carriers out of the sky with plasma torpedoes, and taken Vegita and his general Articha alive with their Ki-Killers, all unseen. He and Articha had only been found because of the general's moonbond with her mate Turna. The Royal Statistician had tracked her slowly but surely across the breadth of light years through the bond they shared, leading Saiyan forces after months of searching, to the hidden base world where Vegita had been found. Each evening, he sat on the sill of the hearth beside Bardock and the two of them listened intently to the toll of losses the Empire was taking on a daily basis now. During the six months of Vegita's captivity, a simple war of resubjegation had become a war for survival, in which Vegita-sei was fighting for her life alone against every sentient race in the Empire. The garrisoned slave worlds had risen up, ushering the Red Demons into their systems, back-stabbing their overlords. The attacks on colony worlds were growing closer and closer to Vegita-sei itself each passing day.

The one good bit of news was that no new super weapons had surfaced in more that ten months. Some rumors held that Jeiyce's secret weapons smith had perished in some random skirmish. The king, however, was not of that opinion.

"Maybe he's just tired of all the killing," Bulma suggested thoughtfully one evening. Vegita's father eyed the girl on the other side of the chess board shrewdly. The King would come to visit the isolated back country house unannounced once every few days to see how Vegita's 'mending' was progressing. The grief shadowed behind the grim, bearded man's cold eyes whenever he looked on his son and saw no recognition there made Vegita want to turn away in shame. He knew what had happened. He had a pretty good idea anyway, and occasional horrific flashes of memory. The Prince of Maiyosh had...broken him. Taken his pride, his memory, even his name, and left him this...this man with no past who started at even the mention of his torturer's name. He knew that he had been left alive to be rescued out of deliberate malice. And worse, that if the Red Prince had killed him outright, it would have grieved his father less than seeing Vegita as he was now.

Vegita folded the book he had been reading, one of Bardock's medical science treatises from the Imperial scientific congress on his findings during a research mission to Tsiru-sei years ago. Everyone in this house seemed to know more about medicine than himself, with the exception of the baby Rom-kun and Bulma's dogs. One of the hounds loped happily along beside him as he moved to sit closer to the two opponents. On his first or second visit, Bulma had explained the game to Ottoussama one time. His father had nodded curtly and beaten her at her own game in half an hour. The King had been highly amused at the girl's sputtering reaction. Apparently she'd never lost a game in her life. Now she was on a vendetta. This game had lasted over an hour already.

"Tired of killing, girl?" His father snorted. "Is there such a thing?"

"It's an alien perspective, Ou-sama," she murmured. "I am an alien, after all."

Ottoussama took one of her rooks with a predatory smirk. "Give me some perspective in this man, then. I would know my enemy, the better to hunt him."

"Well..." Her brow furrowed, as she chose her words with care. She slew his bishop with her remaining knight as she spoke. "If he is not Maiyosh-jin himself, he very likely sought out this Jeiyce out of a wish for revenge. For his people, for his family. Possibly for himself. Whether he is working in hiding on one of the Maiyosh-jin rebel bases, or traveling with the Red Prince himself, he can't be oblivious to the carnage his inventions have caused. Many races find violence and bloodshed terrifying and painful, Ou-sama. Both to give as well of to receive. They may match Saiyan ferocity and bloodlust for a while if properly motivated, but after a while their revenge begins to wound them as deeply as their enemies. So, he may have lost his taste for it. Another possibility is that this man was...taken in by the Maiyosh-jin."

"Taken in?" His father seemed nonplused by such a suggestion. "This bastard has single handedly turned an paltry uprising into an all out war!"

"Think about the 'weapons' he constructed, Sire" she said, retreating her queen into a defensive posture as his own queen advanced. "He might have built each one of these devices thinking he was saving lives. They are all defensive in nature. Even the Ki-Killer guns are nothing more than an equalizer for races with no fighting power to speak of. Invisibility shields and halo projectors to hide civilians, or entire worlds, from the Empire's soldiers. Miniaturization technology to transport food and medicine, to hide get away ships. And plasma nukes are not his invention. They are an old Maiyosh-jin sin, a dirty weapon they've used many times in the past if you read their histories. Jeiyce's own techs simply took this mystery engineer's machines and combined them with other weapons to warp them into something truly deadly." She raised her clear blue eyes and met the hard black stare of her opponent across the table. "But that is only my humble, uninformed theory, Ou-sama. For all I know, this man may live each day of his life with no other hope than to destroy you and your entire race." She took his king with the pawn she had quietly maneuvered into enemy territory.

"Checkmate, Sire," she said meekly, eyes lowered.

His father stared at the board, then at the young woman before him in shocked silence. Then he burst out laughing, deep and hearty. "Another game, girl!"

"He'll be here every evening, now, Bulma," Vegita said with a poorly hidden grin. "In all the Empire, he can count on the fingers of one hand those who can best him in a game of strategy. Even Articha cannot-" He broke off, paling, his breath coming short.

"Boy?" His father was suddenly gazing into his face, eyes intent. And it was suddenly there, or pieces of it. A myriad of segmented images, jumpy and incomplete, memories of the mad before him. His father.

"Ottoussama," Vegita whispered. "You...you were standing at a stone bier on a mountain top, showing me the land that stretched out to the curve of the world. You told me my mother's ashes were strewn out over the whole of our planet's surface. That she was part of Vegita-sei now."

"It is true memory, boy," his father said. "You were not quite two years old, I think." One of Bulma's dogs ducked its head under the King's hand, fawning for affection. His father glanced down at it, growling irritably, and the animal retreated under Vegita's chair with a yip. It knew a pack leader when it saw one.

"I remember you," Vegita said again. His father gazed into his eyes a moment longer. But whatever he saw there brought that look again, the look of a man mourning a son who had suffered a fate worse than death.

"It is coming, Ou-sama!" Scopa told his father tensely, before the King took his leave of them that night. "A little at a time. He will come back to himself completely if he has enough time. But he will need longer than a month."

Vegita listened intently as the King made no reply at first. Rom-kun grabbed both his fingers for support and began toddling around him in a circle. Scopa and Bulma were outside the house with Ottoussama, just on the other side of the hearthroom walls, and he could hear their words clearly, though he doubted they knew that. One of Bulma's dogs raised its head and whined as Vegita-ou made a low growling noise deep in his throat. His father seemed to be choking on something, his energy was surging with a sickened, murderous fury at someone who was not present. At the man who had done this to his son.

"I sent a strong, fierce son to war. The strongest our race has seen in a thousand years. That gentle boy in there cannot follow me to the throne. And I will not see him live to be shamed and mocked by his own people!"

"He is making progress, Ou-sama," Bulma said.

"It is as I said from the first, Sire," Scopa added. "When it comes, it will most likely come all at once."

His father was silent for another long, tense moment. Then he made some sort of noise, a snarling agreement, and he was gone.

Much later, Bulma came to put Rom-kun down for the night. The boy had crawled into his lap as he sat reading by firelight and nodded off.

"He is ashamed of me," Vegita said softly as she took the baby from his arms. "That I was so weak. That I let them break me."

She shook her head. "He's just afraid you'll never remember who you were." Gods, she was so beautiful.

"I think I dreamed of you while they were torturing me," he whispered. "Waking dreams. Your face was like a light in a hell of darkness." He lowered his head, thinking of the words his father had used to describe him, the man he had been before. Strong and fierce. He was neither of those things now. He must seem like a walking shade of the son Ottoussma had been so desperately proud of. Of the man the woman before him must have loved.

"I-I want to tell Ottoussama that I could have stayed strong. I could have...no matter what they did to me. If they'd only let me s-sleep..." She put her arms around his shaking shoulders, holding him, kissing his face.

"There's no shame in it. Everyone has a breaking point, where their strength and will just gives out. We're all just flesh and blood...not gods."

He drew back, peering into her face. "Am I such a fool now? Is that why you don't want me? Because I am...not as I was. Not whole?"

"I do want you, Vegita," she said softly, putting her lips to his. But he pushed her back again, gently.

"No...You-your body wants me. But...you don't. Or you wish you didn't. I do not understand it."

She bit her lip, tears forming in her eyes. Finally she spoke again. "You're not a fool. And you are whole. You're just...you. As you would have been left to follow your own nature. You're the good man you might have been, if you hadn't been raised to be a-Oh Kami! I wish I had met you first!" She began to cry softly, kissing him again. "I think I could have loved you more than my own life if you had been like you are now."

"I was unkind to you?" He couldn't imagine it, but...he had no way of knowing if he had treated her well or ill.

"You..." Her face went still and thoughtful. "You were as good as you knew how to be."

His chest tightened. A more diplomatic and cryptic answer he could not have hoped to receive. He was a prince. He must have been arrogant and spoiled as many sons of the ruling houses in Scopa's histories seemed to be. He had most likely been a spoiled, arrogant lover as well. A thought, a question suddenly leapt into his mind, and with it a crushing wave of pain and nausea. The picture of a woman's face, half-obscured by her tangled raven hair, screaming as-He doubled over, nauseous and gasping.

_Oh gods...Articha..._

"Where is Articha?" He asked tremulously, when he could speak again. He shut his eyes, trying to wipe the images from his mind. Bulma paled to bloodless white, and did not answer.

"She is dead," he said bleakly. "It would have been almost impossible to survive-to survive what they did to her."

"It is possible." Her voice was suddenly so unaccountably cold, he flinched away from her. She stared at him blankly for a long time, then her face softened, her hand caressed his face. "Turna took her to one of their country estates to recover. She won't die. She says she won't give them the satisfaction of having destroyed her. She's a very strong woman."

He nodded solemnly. "I dream sometimes of fighting and killing. Of enjoying it. Even now, when I think of those memories, the thrill of battle seems to sing inside me. I think violence and love of battle must be bred into my blood and bones. I understand them. But I do not understand how a man could use a woman so."

She began to cry again, perhaps out of sympathy for Articha and her pain. He carried her to his bed, laying the sleeping baby between them, holding her until she slept herself. He realized, just before he nodded off, that he did not want to ever sleep again without her beside him.

Another round of days, then weeks passed. The cool winds from the mountain heights breezed away the oppressive heat of high summer. Rom-kun was walking now, running, following him everywhere and trailing behind Bulma's dogs like a tiny predator, trying to catch them and ride them. Vegita read when he pleased, sparred with Bardock each day at morning and dusk, and listened to Bulma and Bardock argue each night at supper. Mostly over the way Bulma was raising Bardock's son.

"You are warping him against the bent of his own nature, girl! How will I make a warrior of him after you've had four solid years to coddle him the way you're doing? He can barely speak, and he is already what the drill instructors in the children's barracks will deem abnormal!"

"That's because I pulled him out of his incubator before they shifted him to the infant conditioning unit, and then to the infant barracks!" She shot back, violently slicing the roast cardu-boar she was serving the men at the table. "This is what a Saiyan child is like naturally, when he hasn't had his head pumped full of subliminal aggression tapes for the first fucking year of his life!"

"Bulma..." Bardock said finally. "If, at four years of age, his drill instructors decide that he is defective mentally, or that he lacks the normal will to fight, they will put him down."

She froze, the knife in her hand aloft. She seemed on the point of flying at the scarred man across the table. Then she spoke coldly. "Then train him yourself, when he's old enough. It's your right as his father. Any Saiyan parent can assume his offspring's training personally if he wants, right? It's just that most warriors don't want to be bothered."

"Girl, I have-"

"You have a chance to make up for your sins, Bardock," she said in a soft voice. "Romayna-san said you would get a chance, that you'd know when you had earned her forgiveness. She was so close to death, she must have seen that Son-Kun's soul had come back to her in Rom-kun."

"Bulma..." Bardock said tiredly. "You are speaking madness."

"You didn't know Son-Kun, Bardock," she said emphatically. "I did! Everything about Rom-kun is the same, not just the fact that he's virtually identical physically. It's everything, from the way he smiles to the way he carried himself since he started to walk."

Bardock shook his head. "It is the same because both boys had the same parents."

Vegita and Scopa kept wisely silent on the matter, letting the two of them edge their way to a detante. Bardock would not agree for any amount of wealth that the boy was his second born son reborn. Bulma would not agree under any circumstances to curb her gentle, nurturing ways toward the child. Eventually they reached some sort of compromise, and Bardock began to train the boy in basic stances of fighting techniques.

He spent his evenings playing chess with Bulma, talking to her, listening to everything she would tell him about herself. Wishing with a kind of torn yearning that he could remember how it had been to be her lover. He knew now that the shadowed pain behind her eyes was from having lost her world, her people, to a Saiyan purge years ago. There was more to this story, something that neither she nor Bardock would tell him, and he suspected it had something to do with the scar-faced soldier's son, the one Bulma insisted had been reborn as Rom-kun. Bardock's second chance, she said cryptically. He wanted to know her, as he must have known her before, to relearn every turn and twist of her brilliant mind and rememorize every smile, frown and gesture. He asked her finally, late one night when the others had already gone to their beds, why she did not hate his people, all his people, if they had killed her race, purged her planet. The whole idea of purging sat ill with him, seeing it through the eyes of the victim, not the conquering warrior race.

She didn't answer at first. "I would have hated you all if I hadn't seen something almost immediately, a truth that most of your enemies don't want to think about. That you're not monsters. You're just men. Very, very strong, and so entrenched in your violent warrior culture that you can't see beyond the end of your own noses most of the time, but…The men who came and destroyed my world…they were friends. They loved each other like brothers, even though they'd never admit it in a million years. They loved their mates, and their children once they got to know them. They were…just people. Raised in a violent, murderous society, trained from the cradle to kill anything not Saiyan without turning a hair. But beneath all that, they were all like Rom-kun. Or like you."

"I am not a child," he said softly.

"No," she said softly, her eyes reflecting the flames of the glowing embers from the heart pit, reflecting the heat that was gathering inside him. "You're not a child."

"I want you," he said simply. "For all that I have forgotten, I have not forgotten that. But…I will wait. For a day when you want me, and that wanting does not bring you grief. " He kissed her, and went to seek his own bed.

Several mornings later, he found her in a state of near hysteria, tossing wires and metal and mechanical diagrams in all directions in the little work room she had set up for herself next to her bedroom. Bardock had left for the day, taking his son with him to accustom the boy to the sensation of flight.

"I guess it would be pretty sad," she said weepily. "A Saiyan child with a fear of heights, and I know I can't teach him those things, but…He's not been away from me for more than a few moments since-since Romayna gave him to me!"

"You should not stay in here," he said thoughtfully.

"Yeah?" She sniffled. "Why not?"

"You will destroy your…thing," he gestured vaguely at the bell-shaped medical machine she had already half dismantled in a less than gentle fashion. "Come with me. Outside for the day."

The fields were littered with tiny crimson flowers, moonflowers, Bardock called them. They walked all morning, making good time, even on foot, with her nervous anxiety to spur them on. Slowly, as she began to tire, she began to think more clearly, rather than simply feel, and she grew calmer. She began to take in the perfect day around her, and enjoy it.

By afternoon, they were lying side by side upon a low hillside, a few miles from Bardock's house. Her eyes seemed to reflect the perfect blue of the sky overhead. Her long hair was tangled in the grass beneath them.

"How did you..." He let the question trail off, thinking better of it. It might bring up painful memories for her.

"Don't start a question and not finish it, Vegita," she said tartly. He grinned, turning on his side to face her, propped up on one elbow.

"How did you breed the dogs if your world is gone?" He watched her face tense, saw the contentment wash away and cursed himself for a fool.

"My jacket," she said, turning to face him. "My parents kept dozens of animals at our estate. When Bardock brought me to Vegita-sei, I bagged the clothes I was wearing the day my world died, to sort of save them. A couple of years later, I realized that Vegita-sei had cloning technology far more advanced than Chikyuu's. I asked Bardock's wife, Romayna, to put the hairs from my clothes, animal hairs, into cryo-storage for me at Med Center. When I started working at Med Center, after you went away, I suddenly remembered that, and I grew two clones of Baka and Yaro, my dogs back on Chikyuu. I could have grown Scratch too, but...he was my father's cat. Poppa always kept a cat with him when he worked, a workshop cat to help him think better, he said. I think it would have made me cry every time I looked at him."

"You loved him greatly?"

"Yes..." She smiled sadly. "I loved him very much..."

"Bardock told me," he said pensively, "that I should never say such a thing to my father."

Her mouth twitched, perhaps visualizing such a scene, or trying to. "That you love him?" He nodded. She sobered, and regarded him seriously. "Don't. It's against Saiyan custom to say it aloud, or even openly admit to it. And it would only upset him if said said it."

"You are not Saiyan," he said, the words tumbling over his lips before he lost his courage. "Would it upset you if I said it to you?"

She stared at him, her face a mask of shock and indecision and-and emotions so complex and conflicting he could not put a name to any of them.

"I-I could love the man you are right now. Kami...I think I already do. But-but you won't stay this way! You'll go back to-to the way you were before!"

"I do not think that is possible," he said, tracing the furrowed line of her beautiful face with his hand. "I believe there is no way back to my memory of before Avaris except through Avaris-through J-Jeiyce," he stumbled over the name, but kept his eyes on hers. "When I do remember, as Scopa says I shall, when I have passed through that hell...Bulma, a man could not emerge from such a thing unchanged." His arms seemed to have wrapped themselves around her of their own will as he spoke, pulling her body slowly, gently against his. "I think I must have been a prideful, selfish lover to you. That I must have hurt you greatly. I am sorry for that. I must have been the basest sort of fool to take your lover for granted" His lips touched hers...

And it all seemed to happen at once. He was drowning in those sky-colored eyes, inside the heat that was blooming in his mind and body, so sweet it was almost agony. Their limbs were becoming entangled in a slow, lingering kiss that seemed to last an eternity. It was all hauntingly familiar, each soft sigh she uttered, every curve of her body, and all new at once. He did not press for more, only lay beside her, caressing her body through her clothes, holding her, as he kissed her again, and again, and again, until she made some sort of low demanding moan. She sat up, pulling his tunic over his head, her mouth trailing down his throat, as he began to pull at the light, flowing dress she wore. In another moment there was nothing between them, not a stitch of clothing separating his skin from hers. It all became a burning blur of soft warm skin and quickening need as she moved over him, touching him, her mouth and fragile, bird boned hands everywhere.

"Do you want this?" He asked softly, trying to look through her eyes, into her heart, almost weeping with joy as he saw the sweet, full smile that bloomed on her face.

"Yes…" She said. "Yes." Her arms were around him, legs encircling him, and then-He gasped and half-sobbed as he slid inside her. She moved above him, her eyes too bright, sparkling with unshed tears.

"Don't…" He tried to say, his voice a shuddering whisper, "I want you to be happy…" He inhaled sharply as she squeezed him gently, her warm tightness contracting around him. "…want to make you happy…I…" He sat up, wrapping her inside his arms, moving with her, building toward some sweet breaking point together.

"I am," she breathed against his lips. "Vegita…I…" She sobbed his name as the end crashed over her, through her, sweeping him over the edge with her like a tidal wave. They clung together like exhausted children, shaking and gasping. The sense of…rightness, that this_, this_, was how it should always be, struck him like a lightning bolt from the clear sky above them. That, somehow, it had had never been right, though he knew he had held her a hundred times before. And that having had this once, just one taste of how it could be, he would never again be able to settle for less.

"Bulma…" He raised his eyes to meet hers, his entire body and soul poured into the pale, insufficient words that only touched on the tiniest fraction of the meaning they were meant to convey. "I love you," he whispered, taking her face between his hands, his mouth against hers. "I love you…"

And it all came back in one shattering instant. His body went rigid, stone still with shock for a second or two. He cold not move, he could not breathe. His heart seemed to have lurched to a halt in his chest. Then he screamed. And screamed. As he had in that black steel pit where they had held him until his voice had frayed and bled and died. The full weight of memory crashed down on him like a thousand jagged shards of glass, slicing into the half-mended fabric of his wounded soul, each reflecting an image of the things they had done to him in that sleepless, unimaginably horror for half a year. Until he had shrieked like the maddened thing he had become at the mere sight of the Red Prince's face. Until he wept like a craven mongrel, pleading for them to stop, begging them to kill him. Until he crawled on his stomach to kiss the Maiyosh-jin's boots...He had broken in half, and all that remained of his self had poured out into his enemy's hands.

She was still holding him, speaking to him softly, while he wept as he had not since he could walk unaided. Another wave of recollection rushed in, and he convulsed under the new blow. He could feel it shifting and reshaping him as it came. Though nothing was the same. He had been right. He would never be as he had been before. He would never-

He saw her face, every memory of her, every instant since the first moment he had lain eyes on her in Raditz' house to this instant, and every second in between...and he wrenched away from her with a broken wail. He lay on his face in the tall red-petal strewn grass, sobbing softly. For her. For himself. For more things than he could give voice to if he lived a thousand years.

A soft hand touched him again, stroking his hair, caressing the back of his neck, still speaking to him gently. Slowly the words began to register with him. She turned him gently over on his back, brushing the tears from his face.

"What did you remember?" She asked softly.

"Everything..." He saw her face change, saw it grow blank, and felt her began to crumble inside with the loss of the man he had been moments ago.

"Do you..." Her face had begun to convulse with pain, as though he had somehow died. Perhaps in a way, he had. "Do you know who you are?"

"No," he said, watching her eyes begin to brim with a pitiful kind of hope. "I am Vegita who went to war to annihilate the Empire's enemies. I am Vegita who lay six months in a Maiyosh-jin dungeon tortured day and night until...until I was no one at all. I am Vegita who dwelt with you in the house of Bardock these three months. I am...I am all three men...and one. But I do not know who that man is." The words gave her no more comfort than they gave him. She turned slowly away from him, weeping as she must have wept for Raditz and her firstborn. Wept in Silenced agony each day as she built her little weapons on that green, sheer sloped island. That island that must lay housed in a place of horror in her mind, in the same way that black, steel Maiyosh-ijn cell would forever dwell inside him.

He knew he should let her cry herself out, that any comfort he might try to give would only mock her pain...because it came from him. But he could not stop himself. He could not hear her voice, breaking up in tearing sobs, and do nothing. He pulled her into his arms, and to his wonder, she clung to him as he rocked her naked body against his, until she was simply too tired to weep any more.

A long silence stretched out between them, broken only by the sound of their breath and the light winds sweeping in from the open plains.

"You win, Bulma," he said at last.

She turned in his embrace, gazing up at him. "Win?"

"The fool's 'game' we began before I went to war," he said hollowly. "When we each vowed to enslave the other's heart. You are the victor, woman. You will not hear me give it voice again, but...I meant the-the words I spoke. I still do. And I know that should we both live until the sun above us burns cold and dies, you will never feel the same. I did not understand that before, or even why. I do now."

"And I swore I'd use your love to destroy you," she said thoughtfully. "But I wonder...if the man I made that promise to isn't destroyed already. You're right. You aren't the same now.

"The man I was two hours ago had your heart, did he not?" He whispered.

"Yes..." She said just as softly. "But he's gone now."

"And now..." He shook his head despairingly. "You could no more care for me than I could take the Red Prince as my sworn brother. There is no road back from that launch pad where Raditz and your son died. And no road away from that island in the Western Sea where we began."

She seemed to be thinking, wracking her mind, scouring her heart for something to give him hope, for some way back to what she had given him with all her heart a few scant hours ago. "Maybe there is," she said hesitantly.

"Tell me."

She fixed him with a stare that seemed to flicker between deathly coldness and a banked furnace of sweet warmth. The unattainable warmth of her heart. "Give me back everything you took from me," she said steadily. "If you can understand what it was you took, if you can overcome your pride enough to give it back...then...then maybe I'll be able to see the man I loved this morning inside the man you are now."

He closed his eyes, swallowing down the spate of angry, demanding words, swallowing the knee jerk impulse to grab her, to shake her, to command her to give him what he so desperately needed from her. It would not work. And if it was not freely given, it was as sickening and twisted as those moments when he had kissed Jeiyce of Maiyosh's boots and called him master. But...oh gods...he did not even know where to begin.

A crowing, piping voice, followed by an answering canine yip and a faint spike of Bardock's Ki warned him they would soon have company.

"Mommma!" The boy came tearing over the flowering moors, just as they managed to pull their clothes back on in a hurried rumpled fashion. The brat's father came trailing behind him, carrying the carcass of a cho-deer slung across one shoulder.

"Edeeeta!" The boy cried, mangling his name, barreling into his arms, embracing him in a fashion he would have thought impossible for a Saiyan child.

His woman had frozen, her face a still mask of veiled fear. Bardock had paused as well, from his stance on the crest of the hill above them, sensing the difference in his Ki. The man was poised like an arrow in a bow, ready to spring forward and give his life for the child if need be. A year ago, he would have found the man's reaction impossible to fathom, the mark of a sentimental weakling and a fool. Vegita slowly pealed the brat off his chest and held him up in both hands, studying the boy with a puzzled frown while Bulma's son continued to babble about "Fy-yin' all day wit Toussan."

The memory of how he'd lain beside his woman with this cub nestled between them, feeling an unthinking acceptance of such a thing as normal and natural, feeling a kind of peace he doubted he would ever have again-It was nauseating to the man he had been, an image he might have slain both the boy and the woman to erase from his mind one year ago. To the man he was now...he did not know. There were too many changes to take inventory of in so short a time, too many conflicting impulses raging in side him to be sure of anything. He would have to learn to know this stranger he had become. But one thing had not changed, he decided with an internal snarl of defiance at the years of reactive conditioning that told him he should hurl this warm, squirming thing in his hands away with a violent, vicious curse. He would do as he wished. He would make his own law and custom, as he wished, and pity the man who tried to gainsay him. Slowly, very slowly, he sat the boy in the crook of one arm, and turned his gaze to meet Bulma's.

"Sleep in Med Center when you wish, or in my bed when it pleases you. Bring the boy to my house when you come. I will not have my foster son sleep alone at Med Center with only that Madrani Scopa to attend him." He fought the surge of hope that burst inside him as he saw the brief, brilliant spark of warmth flare in her blue eyes as he spoke. The unspannable chasm that lay between them would not be bridged overnight. He was seeking the path across in the darkness without so much as a map to guide him.

Vegita grunted disdainfully, and she uttered a soft laugh at his next words. "The brat might be permanently damaged by such company and grow to become a physician."

(COMING SOON: Chapter III: The war comes to Vegita-sei, Mourom is closing in on the identity mysterious "mastertech", and Vegita finds he's not as recovered as he thought-He can't bring himself to kill anymore.)


	3. Chapter 3

**CHAPTER III**

_He shook off the foolish chill that had just shivered down his spine with a barely audible snarl. He became aware that he had been making a soft, deep noise in the back of his throat without realizing it. It was a low, animal's purr, vibrating inside his chest, as his hands threaded through the silky locks of his woman's hair, washing it clean. His hands began moving over her now, as he slowly sponged her body clean of the night's sweat, his eyes half-lidded. It was just past daybreak and already the heat was becoming oppressive. He could not remember a hotter fall. Or perhaps the heat was coming from him, he reasoned with a hazy smile, radiating out from where his body and that of the woman who sat before him in the bathing pool touched. He frowned angrily, trying to order and command his thoughts, but there was a red-tinted glamour encircling them. He knew it was pressing down on his reason, shifting his perceptions, tossing his emotions and desires into a swirl of bloodlust and violence. And he knew it would continue to grow as the day wore on, as-_

_He blinked, gritting his teeth with the effort it took to think straight. He should send Bulma away now. Had he said something to her just after they woke this morning? Some mad command for her to return to him this evening before nightfall? He shook his head for clarity, and kissed the side of her neck lightly. Foolish woman, to have come to him last night._

_"I told you to return to me this afternoon," he said frowning. What the hell had she been thinking, to have come to the villa last night?! "Do not."_

_Her body trembled with faint laughter. "I wasn't going to."_

_The heat gathering inside him seemed to be feeding of the flame-colored light streaming through the shutter slats on the windows of the bathing room. Stupid, reckless woman, to have some to him last night, instead of staying in Med Center where she would be safe! Instead of obeying his express command to stay there, he thought with a soft growl of anger. Disobedient, uppity, disrespectful bitch! His fingers dug into the soft, pliant flesh in her arms, and he felt it give way with a rumble of viscous satisfaction, feeling her softness pressed against his hardness-and then all thoughts of sending her away, all thoughts of anything, vanished like the steam rising off the water around them. He growled deep in his throat, and turned her roughly to face him, shoving her hard against the side of the bath. He caught one soft, water beaded breast in his sharp teeth, drawing a cry from her as her sweet, sweet blood streamed into his mouth. He pressed forward against her, pushing her legs apart-_

_He froze._

_Clarity and cold horror descended on him like an ice storm in spring. His stomach had launched itself into his throat, his breath was ragged and harsh. He felt the blood leave his face as he gazed at her, truly seeing her now. He opened his mouth to speak, but no sound would come out. He looked down at his hands, clenched around her upper arms, at the razored nails of his fingers that were slowly shifting back to normal. He had-he had gouged her arms and back, and as he looked down at the water swirling around them, he saw that it was bright with her blood. Her body…oh gods…She was covered in bites and bruises!_

_"Bulma…" He choked out._

_"Don't," she said softly, one soft hand caressing his face. "I should have stayed away last night."_

_"I am-" His throat contracted against the words, but he forced them out. They would not be silent. "I am s-s-sorry…I-"_

_"You," she said firmly, "are in the early stages of moon madness. And I should have stayed cloistered with the others below Med Center like you told me to." And she smiled that serene smile, the same one she had given him the night before, when she had come to him, the same smile that had made his entire being shudder with relief and joy, knowing that the agony of the weeks of coldness between them was over. That she had forgiven him for withholding the last piece of the blood debt he owed her, that she understood that it could not be. Her face had been utterly sure and decided, as it was now. "I knew better, and you weren't enough in your right mind to send me away. I just wanted to be with you one more time before…" That sweet, unnerving smile faltered slightly. "…before I went below with the others." She kissed him gently, smoothing away the furrows in his face with her lips, and he held her, gently rocking her body against his. Neither of them spoke for a long moment._

_"You must see to yourself," he said, pushing her back slowly, reluctantly. "You and bleeding, and-and-"_

_"I should go," she agreed._

_"I swore to you," he said numbly, "that you would never again have so much as a bruise from my hands."_

_She stood gingerly, and he helped her towel dry and pull on her clothes, watching her in silence as she moved about the bedroom with that same air of eerie calmness, gathering her things as though the bruises and wounds on her body were nothing._

_"The children are secured then?" He asked with more calm than he felt when she had collected the last of her medical trinkets into her satchel._

_"All tucked away. The entire subterranean sector of Med Center is jam packed right now, and very, very loud. Nail says he may go mad before the week if over." She had moved to the east window and he stepped around to stand behind her, though he did not follow her gaze upward. Above, he knew the moon was burning like a red inferno in the morning sky, drawing ever nearer, turning the heavens the color of blood. Tonight it would be even closer, and full…_

_It was a great and momentous omen, the oldest warriors said, that the King's centennial should fall upon the season of the moon. Even with his eyes lowered, the crimson light seemed to be boring into his brain, threatening to shred his sanity in broad daylight. Tonight…tonight would be mad and joyous, a festival of blood, death and battle._

_"We have had all the little ones from the infant conditioning units and more than half the children from the children's three, four and five year old barracks on Vegita-sei already sedated now," she murmured. "All thirty thousand of them. Bardock said he had a couple of words to offer you for giving him and his squad baby-sitting duty down there, and they weren't 'thank you.'"_

_Vegita smirked wanly. "Was Rikkuum a help to you, or did the big fool simply get underfoot?"_

_She leaned back against him. "He's good at keeping the rowdy ones in line. He told me he used to be a drill instructor on Tsiru-sei. And he's surprisingly gentle with the little ones…the babies…" She was silent, her slim body shivering lightly against his, even in the steadily rising heat._

_He turned her to face him, bowing his head, laying one cheek along side hers. "You are still angry with me." He was not speaking of anything he had done this morning or last night, and they both knew it._

_"No," she whispered. "Anger's the wrong word. I wish…oh gods, I wish so many things."_

_"I cannot give you what you wish," he told her intently. "But I will give you the closest thing approaching it. I swear it on my life. It will not be this year of the next, but I will honor all the oaths I have sworn to you."_

_She sighed against him, deep and sad. "I believe you." And she wrapped her arms around him, holding him tightly, her head buried in his chest. They stood like that for only a few seconds. One moment of contentment in nothing more than the other's arms. Then she straightened, and squared her shoulders. And she kissed him once more. "I'm going," she said softly, resolutely. "I'll see you again soon. When it's all over."_

_He stood still as a statue, watching her go._

He stepped through the arched doorway of his villa and paused on the threshold, surveying the empty hearthroom, spotless of even a spec of the dust of disuse. The housemaids had kept the villa open, Bulma had told him, tending his house and her flower and herb garden, awaiting the master's return-which had been, by no means, a certainty before yesterday. The two serving women, Batha and Caddi, bowed low as his eyes fell on them. Both their pleasantly blank faces froze in apprehension as his gaze lingered on them. The master of the house never looked directly at a domestic slave, any more than he would at a mechanical appliance-unless the slave had displeased him. Both women were ivory-skinned, of middle years, their black, overly large nocturnal eyes huge as they gazed back at him in shock.

He had sent no message or signal to anyone of his impending return. The others behind him-Bulma, Scopa and the boy climbing out of her little flyer, Bardock standing at ease in the doorway, were watching him closely.

"You have kept the house and grounds in good repair," he told the women finally. "I am hungry."

Both pale women dipped again in hurried bows and scurried into the kitchens. Bulma's dogs leapt from her flyer and bounded past Bardock into the house, circling the hearth in a mindlessly exuberant chase. He watched them silently as he sat slowly in his own hearth side chair, feeling terribly strange to be doing so, as though he were only half-waking. Both animals skidded to a halt before him as he made a clipped, commanding growl, their tongues hanging from their slobbery mouths idiotically. Bulma had trailed in after him, Romayn cradled sleepily against her breast.

"If," he told the dogs with soft menace, "either of you relieves yourself inside my house, we will dine upon roast dog this night."

They stared at him blankly for the space of a half-second, then 'woofed' happily and resumed their merry race around the hearth.

"Worthless beasts," he said disgustedly.

Bulma chuckled softly at his shoulder. "Yes, they are," she said. "I'll take them back to Med Center with me in the morning. They'll have a good time digging up the garden conservatory in the central quad."

"Leave them," he said after a moment's thought, staring up at her. "Pack animals should not be caged, even in such a large cage as Med Center. The servants will feed them, and they may run wild through the hills as they did at Bardock's house." The thought of cages, of caging anything with wit enough to draw breath, gave him a sense of shuddering horror he could barely mask behind the hard mold of his face. But his woman smiled, a pleased, hesitant turn of expression that stilled the internal shuddering.

She left, without comment, carrying the boy into their private rooms, the dogs loping along behind her.

"Ouji-sama," Bardock said quietly.

Vegita turned back to see the soldier seated on the circular rim of the hearth pit. Scopa had vanished into the kitchens for some reason. "There are things I did not tell you-things your lord father bade me keep from you while you were still recovering."

"Tell me now," Vegita said grimly.

"Your father has been off world for nearly ten days, but he is returning just before dawn tomorrow. In your absence, and with the loss of Articha as well, he has been obliged to lead much of the war in the field himself. You will find the Capital and Vegita-sei itself much changed, my prince. The King became far more severe in his domestic policies after you were lost…and even more so after you were found. And because of your father's need to see to much of the war personally, he has been forced to appoint a steward from among his chief ministers to keep the homeworld in hand while he is away."

Vegita swore softly. "Mousrom."

"Your fears for Bulma's safety were well justified, Ouji-sama," Bardock growled. "Twice I had word from sources of Scopa's acquaintance that they were coming for her, twice I moved her and the boy just in time. On both of these occasions, your father was off world."

Vegita felt cold inside. How close had they come to taking her? And how much would the fat sadist dare even after Vegita had officially returned to the Capital?

"There is more," Bardock went on. "The entire slave population of Vegita-sei has been either rotated to ship foundries and weapons factories off world…or given to Mousrom's hands. The only exception is Med Center, because we need them so desperately."

"Why?" His father did nothing without a reason, and rage for the loss of his heir was not sufficient to rid an entire planet of the bulk of its slave labor force.

"Since you were lost, there have been three separate attacks on Vegita-sei itself. Rad nukes smuggled onto the planet and detonated at three of the smaller port cities in the north. We contained the fallout with atmospheric scrims, but the cities were lost, and Mousrom's own informants uncovered a forth attempt to set off a bomb in the Capital itself. In addition…there have been two assassination attempts on the King himself. It is a bad business, my prince. And the worst of it is that much of what the Inquisitor spouts in defense of his torturers' dens is founded in truth. The enemy has a technology in their invisibility shields that allow their operatives to move among us unseen, undetected, even here on Vegita-sei. It is a monstrous weapon in the aid of terrorism. And each plot was traced to Red Network operatives here on Vegita-sei. Slaves and freedmen." Bardock paused, surveying him with a penetrating gaze. "Scopa has learned from former members of his own medical staff who have been pressed into the service of the Inquisition that Mousrom has been lobbying to have you 'put out of your misery' since the day you were rescued. Those Council members and Elite nobles he has not bullied or blackmailed into his hand, he has worked into a frenzy by poisoning their minds against you, my prince. He has told them that Vegita-sei's greatest liability in its hour of need is a weak, half-mad heir to the throne."

The words hung there in the cold silence, as Vegita sat utterly still, numb to the bone with rage that could not be quantified. He was literally afraid to move or speak until it began to subside, fearing he would uproot the entire hillside beneath them if he exploded. "It is good," he snarled softly after a long time, "that I sent no word before me that I was returning. I will have the element of surprise when I greet the Royal Council tomorrow." He had not stopped to think for one moment of the last few hours just what he would be returning to. He was publicly dishonored and disgraced as a warrior and a man in the eyes of his people now. Mousrom would have somehow found out the state he had been in when he had been rescued, would have leaked whispers of it to the right ears in such a way that it could never be traced back to him. And now…the entire Empire knew. In the wake of such a smear campaign, he would have an uphill battle to win back his honor in the best of circumstances. And now he was…Vegita saw again the image of himself curled into a ball of agony, felt the gasping, drowning sense of his own lungs rebelling on him, as he remembered the thing-the thing that had happened an hour before leaving Bardock's house. The secret only he and Bardock knew.

And beyond that considerable obstacle, there was another factor he would not be able to hide at all. He was not as he had been. And they would see it, in every word and gesture, take note of the differences within seconds after he greeted them tomorrow. One thing had not changed, he knew instinctively. He was no liar or play-actor. They were skills he simply did not possess and never would. He could be nothing other than what he was, whatever that was now. He would not even know how to begin feigning 'normalcy'. But…he could not lose sight of the fact that no one, _no one_, could do a thing to him he did not allow. He would be the strongest man in the room tomorrow in Council, and-he smiled grimly-if he greeted Mousrom as he planned, in thanks for the fat man's attempts on Bulma's life, it would go a long way toward proving the Minister of Intelligence's rumors as just that. Rumors.

Vegita stared into the hard eyes of the man before him. "You know I am not as I should be. Not fully recovered."

Bardock snorted. "It depends what you mean by recovery. If you are saying you are not longer that vicious, spoiled, blood-thirsty brat prince you were, and will never be again, that is not a thing to mourn."

A year ago, he would have torn the man's heart from his chest for those words. Now, he only eyed the older soldier narrowly. "Bardock, father of Raditz," Vegita said pointedly. "Why do you advise me? Why do you not fly to Mousrom and my father and tell them the secret you know? Why would you not rejoice in my downfall and disgrace?"

Bardock's eyes never left his. The cold, stony stare never softened. "If you were an ordinary man, I would have killed you long ago. Though you are far stronger than I am, I would have found a way. But you are not an ordinary man. The war is going very, very badly for us, my prince. Though it is treason now to say such a thing aloud. We have won many victories, but the enemy has beaten us back at every turn on a larger scale, and Jeiyce is now striking at the core systems, pushing closer and closer to Vegita-sei. We are in mortal danger of losing this war and being eradicated as a race. Unless we find a savior."

"A savior," Vegita whispered bitterly. "You saw with your own eyes today how very inadequate I am to that task at the moment!"

"You will rise to the need of your people, Ouji-sama!" Bardock said harshly. "You will find a way to overcome this impediment the Red Prince left mined in your subconscious, and you will save us all. You must. Gods of war, boy! Hasn't it occurred to you yet how strong you must be now?!"

"Stop speaking in riddles, man!" Vegita snapped furiously.

"You lay in that torturer's cell six months," Bardock said impatiently, like a tutor with a slow student. "What will half a year of teetering upon the threshold of death have done to a power already as great as yours?"

Vegita stared at him in utter shock. Bardock was right. Gods…the Saiyan healing factor that brought a warrior back from death's doorway with half again his former strength. And how many times had they taken him to the edge of death with their tortures, stopped his heart or burst his organs from nothing more than the pain they were inducing, only to revive him, heal him, and start again? More times than he could count…

"The old legend of the Super Saiyan," Bardock intoned, "says that he suffered pain at the hands of Aiysa-sama of Tsiru-sei to equal the torments of the damned before he achieved his destiny. Our world's first, violent meeting with a space-faring race-the Tsiru-jin Invasion. We thought they were demons come from the skies, because we had never seen star ships before that day. They laid Vegita-sei to waste, and took all of our kind that survived back to Tsiru-sei as slaves. Among them, the Saiyan King, Vegita. They crucified him, the tale says, in the White Hall, and tortured him before the court, while the lizards mocked him and made a sport of new ways to hurt him. Our entire race would have died beneath Tsiru-jin heels had he not saved them. I gave you those histories of Vegita-sei to read while you were convalescing, my prince, so the story might be fresh in your mind."

"It does not say how he accomplished it," Vegita said. "Only that, 'His heart broke in grief and rage for his people, and he cast off his bonds and slew Aiysa-sama in a storm of righteous, golden fire.' Very poetic, but not exactly a specific historical account."

"It does not tell what the last straw was," Bardock agreed. "The event that 'broke his heart' and pushed him over the edge. But I think…I am sure that the Tsiru-jin themselves took his raw power level to the edge of Super Saiyan unwittingly, by torturing him repetitively. Just as Jeiyce did to you."

Vegita was silent, barely breathing, as he tried to absorb the magnitude of what the man was saying-saying very convincingly. Super Saiyan…

"When you left Vegita-sei sixteen months ago," Bardock said grimly. "I hated you as much as you imagine, my prince. I still do not like you. But I think you are our hope. That you are poised to do what no one has done in a thousand years, and that you can save us all. To this end, I will follow you and aid you in all that you do, Ouji-sama. I will not see our people die and be forgotten."

"All my liegemen and vassals are slain on Avaris," Vegita told him slowly. "There is no warrior still living to whom I may safely turn my back. Will you swear to my service, Bardock?"

A flicker of something midway between fear and hope danced in the other man's eyes, and Vegita smiled inwardly, seeing again that core of intractable honor in the man, the honor that made him as poor a liar as Vegita himself. All that the older man said or swore was the utter truth as he saw it.

Bardock nodded curtly. "That I will, Ouji-sama. And all my squad will follow suit if you will have them. Two of my band I have fought beside, shoulder to shoulder, since we were in the children's barracks together. The others are the brats of those of our number who have died. We are all of one mind in this."

"I will not have them sight unseen," Vegita murmured. "I will meet with them first, but I will take your word on their worth. You might have slain me a hundred times in the last three months if you wanted. You have cause."

"That I do," the other man said coldly. This strong, loyal soldier of Vegita-sei would willingly swear a lifetime of faithful service to an enemy, because he saw it as best for his world. There were no apologies for deeds done, nor forgiveness either. But there was redress. And honor.

"When my position is once again secure," Vegita told him in a low formal tone. "I will have Romayn formally declared my foster son, to be raised in my own household as an Elite-foster-brother, body guard, and first lieutenant to my heir. In this way, I will mete out true payment of the blood debt I owe your house. Each day of the boy's life."

Bardock stared at him long and hard, then swallowed, bending on one knee. "I pledge to you, Ouji-sama-my faith, my strength, my body and my life. I will serve you all my days…and thus, serve my people and Vegita-sei."

Scopa emerged from the kitchens a moment later, his face shining with a kind of eager anticipation. The Madrani drew up short, surveying the two Saiyans. "Did you-?"

Bardock nodded. "I told him everything."

"Ouji-sama…" The Madrani began slowly, unsure of whether to speak or not. "I am not a warrior, but I can be of use to you where Mousrom is concerned. He has taken members of my staff to work on his torture units…I am not Saiyan, but Vegita-sei is the only home I have ever known. I will not pretend that being a slave was anything less appealing than it was, but…You may not see it from where you sit, Ouji-sama, but he has made this world a Hell within the mortal sphere. And he is using my medics to aid him. I am in contact with a great many of my people who labor in Kharda City. They hear much of Mousrom's private plans. They will be more than willing to pass information to you through me that might help bring about his downfall."

"I cannot kill him," Vegita ground his teeth at the words, the double meaning they bore. They tasted like bile in his throat. "Yet. He is too valuable to the Empire while we are in crisis. So, I must bring him to reign. I need leverage. Enough information to control him. Tell your folk to find out anything they can. Let them know I will grant freedom to all those who aid me in this and their kin."

"I will do as you say, Ouji-sama," the doctor said.

"If I should fall in the next few weeks," Vegita said slowly, watching both their faces tense at those words. Because of that very real possibility. And because, he realized belatedly, it was another sharp reminder of how very different he was from the man they had feared and served a year ago. How would he counterfeit normalcy under the close scrutiny of his father, who knew him better than anyone?! "If I am thrown down," he went on grimly. "Or if I fall in battle on some late day, I command you both to take Bulma and the boy, and flee Vegita-sei. Take them somewhere in the outer spiral arms, beyond the reach of the Empire." Both men murmured quiet oaths to do so. They took their leave moments later. The Madrani seemed in a great hurry for some reason, leaving without even bidding Bulma farewell.

"His lover is on Vegita-sei for a few weeks," Bulma told him around a small mouthful of food, as the serving maids piled the table high with every dish he had ever shown any remote interest in. Vegita wondered how she stayed healthy eating so little. "Scopa doesn't get to see him very often these days. Zarbon got tapped as part of Lord Turna's morale project when the war went into full swing. He travels to garrisons worlds, protectorates, colonies, pretty much the entire Empire, and schools the chefs there. Lord Turna told him a well-fed Saiyan is generally a happy Saiyan, so he feeds them as well as possible."

Vegita grunted in agreement around a huge mouthful of roast meat. Beside Bulma, seated on a pile of cushions so he could reach the table, Romayn was doing his Saiyan heritage proud as well, though he seemed to be getting as much on the floor as in his mouth. The dogs hovered below the boy's chair, wolfing down each windfall eagerly.

"Would little master like some more meat pie?" One of the ivory-skinned maids asked with a poorly hidden smile.

"Uh-huh!" The boy crowed, shoving another handful in his mouth. Three helpings later, the brat began nodding, teetering atop the mound of cushions.

"I guess that's normal for his age," Bulma said with a frustrated frown.

Vegita nodded, still shoveling the last few rounds of his meal. "We eat like that when we are growing. When we reach our full growth, we stop before we pass out. Most of the time."

"Dammit," she swore softly, hefting the boy up on one hip. "No one can seem to tell me what is and isn't healthy for him because no one raises their own children. I try to ask Bardock things like that and he just shrugs and says, 'It won't kill him.'"

He followed her silently to their rooms, through their own bedchamber to the adjacent study she had converted into a second bedroom. He wondered with a vague sense of unease where she had magically produced the new furnishings in less than an hour. There was a modest sized bed under the window, and a child's pallet bed in the antechamber that was set off from the study, separated by a swinging shutter door. "I thought we could try sleeping in here tonight, if it's all right with you," she said softly. "It catches the southern winds after nightfall and it might be cooler." The dogs lay down on either side of the brat's cot like drooling bodyguards. Vegita turned away from the sight of his her face as she lay the boy down. It was an expression so full of her heart, sweet and unequivocal and unconditional. He found himself in their master bedchamber again, staring down at the bed. His bed. The bed he and she had shared for more than a year before he had gone to war. Since the day he had brought her to the Capital, his falsely smiling, newly-broken, doll lover…

She yelped at the sound of the blast, rushing in to see him dousing the smoldering rubble with a gust of pressure from his Ki. The entire room was a charred mess. He turned and met her wide frightened eyes, and took her hand, drawing her back into the other room, closing the door behind him. His breath was painfully tight in his chest.

"I will not lie beside you in that bed or that room ever again," he said hoarsely, shutting his eyes against the images, hundreds of them, of her face twisted in pain and rage and grief as he used her in that room. Pain and grief and rage that he was giving her body pleasure, that she wanted this hated enemy, who broke her bones as he took her, without realizing it, or caring. _It's madness_, she had said long ago, one of the first times he had commanded her to speak to truth, _that you could make me come even after all the unforgivable things you've done to me…make me want you against my mind, against my will, against my reason. Like a fire in my blood. I think that's the worst thing you've done to me…_

He closed his eyes, seeing himself thanking Jeiyce meekly for a beating, thanking that smiling red face for helping him to be less evil, the booming laughter of the Aquir-jin Dodoria, the tearing pain of those razor-barbed whips-

Soft hands on either side of his face, gently pulling his shaking hands down, easing him back onto the bed by the window. She began pulling at his boots, his tunic, his pants. He gazed down at his bare chest and upper arms and-gods, what must his back look like?! He had taken no note of these things before recovering his memories, but now…He was scarred with whip stripes and other like injuries. There was probably no part of his body they had left unmarred except for his face. The scars were deep, and they were permanent. No amount of time in the regen tank would erase this.

She curled up next to him, her head resting on his shoulder, her arms around him. "Try and sleep," she said. "Tomorrow's going to be a hard day." She kissed him lightly and he stared at her, swallowing hard.

"No one did this for you," he said. She did not misunderstand him, and her body tensed against his as he had known it would. She did not say anything for a long time. "Scopa did," she finally whispered. "And Batha and Caddi, too. They were both garrison pleasure slaves when they were young women. I've had the life of a pampered princess compared to what they must have lived through."

Garrison whores...His stomach clenched, as he saw again Articha's screaming face. Another door was opening in his mind to a new chamber of nightmares. Nothing would be the same, ever again. He would see Vegita-sei through new eyes, and everywhere he turned, he would see things he had never taken note of become the stuff of horrors. That twisting sensation again, as his eyes fell on her.

"What is this I am feeling?" He hadn't realized he had spoken the words aloud until she answered softly.

"Is it like shame at having done something dishonorable, only different, more personal?" He made a noise of agreement. That was it exactly.

"It's called _guilt_," she spoke the alien word in her own lilting native tongue. "It's...it's a sense of a blood debt so strong it swallows you up in shame if you don't find a way to make reparation." "It is _cho-gugol_," Vegita whispered. "Debt of blood and honor. A warrior can only pay such a debt with his life's blood."

"Death is an easy out," she said coldly. "You big, strong warriors always talk about dying nobly to absolve your sins." She snorted indelicately. "Bullshit. It's harder, more noble, to live with the evil things you've done and try to make up for them. You're right, Vegita. You do owe me this _cho-gugol._ But I've told you how to be free of it."

_Give me back everything you took from me,_ she had said.

"So you have," he said, stroking her face. He wanted her. Gods, how he wanted her. But...he closed his eyes, savoring the memory of her in his arms, her wind-tossed hair strewn with the red petals of moon blossoms, her eyes brimming with that same wealth of love that had shown on her face moments ago when she had tucked Romayn in for the night. Had that really been today? Less than six scant hours ago? Perhaps it seemed like a lifetime because he had recalled a lifetime in that small space of time-and lost her in the same instant. She was here, lying beside him. And if he began to make love to her, she would receive him eagerly. But... It would not be as it had been today. And that one, fleeting taste of how it should have always been between them had soured his desire for anything less. He could not bear the thought of touching her and seeing that look of haunted self-hate in her eyes as he held her.

"Thank you," she said softly.

"What have I done to warrant your thanks?" He asked, sinking into the sky-blue depths of her eyes. "For telling Bardock and Scopa to take Rom-kun an myself to safety if anything happens to you." "Eavesdropper," he growled, with a faint twitch of his lips.

"Yes," she said unrepentantly. "Trust your instincts about Bardock. He's sworn to you now, and I never met a more honorable man. I don't think he knows how to lie."

He frowned at her in perplexity. "I do not understand what it is between the two of you. He treats with you as though you were his own daughter. But he slew your kin, destroyed your world, killed your childhood lover-" He stopped as she began to shake all over in short ripples of laughter he realized with surprise were giggles. It made her look very young.

"Son-kun was..." She paused to catch her breath. "He was _not_ my boyfriend. He was four years younger than me. More like my little brother." She sobered abruptly, caught up for a moment in the memory of things loved and lost. "I can't explain it, Bardock and myself. I hated him so much at one point. More than anyone I've ever known. My first year on Vegita-sei, I tried to kill him more times than I ever even thought about killing you. Every time he came to the house in Turrasht to visit, and sometimes I'd send little presents home with him as well-bombs wired into the metal of his armor and stuff like that. He seemed to think it was cute. I stopped when I realized the murder attempts were becoming a family joke. 'How will the Chikyuu girl try to off Bardock this time?' I wounded him critically a couple of times, and even then, they all thought it was hilarious. Bardock's squad lieutenant, Toma, began taking garrison bets on whether he'd come back to the barracks wounded or not, and which part of his body I'd injure, and they'd all sit around and laugh like hell when he came back bandaged and bleeding. Your people are just incomprehensible to me in some ways." She sighed irritably. "But in spite of this, or maybe because of it, he just adored me-from the first moment when we met, when I put a hole through his shoulder. He treated me as though what I had with-with Raditz was a real marriage and not just his son loving a slave he owned. Now...I don't hate him anymore. And that's good. It's like I cut some black poisonous tumor out of my heart."

"What made you stop hating him," Vegita asked intently. "After all that he had done to you." She regarded him thoughtfully. As ever, she saw through his words to the heart of his question. "The day Arbatzu fell, when he fought so hard to save as many lives as he could, only to lose the one person he loved the most at the end of the day. The way she didn't forgive him, even at the end, and the look on his face when she sent him away. The way I've seen him sit and listen to the hyper wave news feed over the last year, as the reports of more and more Saiyan worlds destroyed began to come it, and feel that helplessness of knowing your people are dying and that you aren't strong enough to save them. I thought it would feel good to see him hurt so badly. But it didn't. And now he has a second chance to do right by Son-kun." Vegita suppressed a worried chill at her emphatic assertion that Romayn was the boy Kakarott reborn.

Her eyes were veiled and fathomless blue, watching his face closely in the darkened room. "You're wondering if I still hate you. I-I don't know. Sometimes…I catch myself thinking of the you before and the you now as two separate men. Maybe because you've been so different since you were rescued. Or maybe for the same reason I stopped hating Bardock. Because what they did to you was-was worse in most ways than what you did to me. You never took my mind or memory of who I was away. When Scopa told me what they'd done to you, how long it had lasted, and tried to prepare me for the state you'd be in-I thought it would make me happy to see you so horribly wounded, inside and out. But it just hurt. Because I know how bad it is." He was silent, struggling with every impulse, every want and desire and need, to speak his next words. "You are free," he choked the words out. He was losing her...losing her. "I will give you a-a ship if you-"

She lay her hand over his mouth, stopping the stumbling words. "I will stay."

"You..." He knew he was staring at her open-mouthed, like an imbecile.

"Will stay," she said again. "Partly because of Rom-kun, but also because of what's going on in the Capital and on Vegita-sei now. I won't run away with my own freedom and leave all the other slaves in the Empire to that monster Mousrom. If I can do anything to help stop him, I will. And don't think he'll stop with non-Saiyan's, Vegita. He's about two seconds away from petitioning your father to allow him to interrogate Saiyans as well."

"That will not happen," Vegita said firmly.

She shook her head slowly. "Tell me that after you've been to Council tomorrow. I can help you stop him, Vegita. The same way Scopa's going to help you. And...I can help with other things too. Give me tomorrow to get some things ready and I'll show you what I mean." She went silent, lying so still beside him he thought she must have drifted off to sleep. Then, softer... "And I'll stay because of you. Because...I think you're as different from the man who went to war a year ago as if you'd died and been reborn. And because of that, I think you might become a king the likes of which Vegita-sei has never seen. A king who might hold an Empire together because it wants to be held together-not just out of brute force. I'll stay...for the hope of what you might become." It was almost the same reason Bardock had given him, spoken in different words. The hope of what he might become...to Vegita-sei and to her. He fell into sleep with that hope wrapped around him like a warm blanket.

Bardock met him at dawn, his old, but polished armor gleaming with the newly emblazoned crest of the royal house. He nodded curtly and followed Vegita as they made the short journey over the foothills to the Capital. Vegita drew up short as the older man signaled him when they reached the Palace, hovering directly over the dome of the King's council chamber. Bardock turned to face him in the air.

"If one of the assassination attempts on the King had succeeded," he said grimly, "Mousrom would have seen you slain in less than an hour. Can you picture him on your father's throne, Ouji-sama?"

Vegita hissed angrily, nodding his approval, letting the rage begin to build inside him. Bardock was one clever, clever bastard. He meant to whip Vegita into a murderous fury before he entered the Council, to drive him into a mental state that would be almost indistinguishable from his former self.

"It almost makes a man wonder," Bardock said. "If those attempts on your father's life were truly the actions of the Red Network, or well concealed attempts at a royal coup."

Vegita stared at Bardock, his teeth clenched, his mind racing. Gods, even Mousrom would not dare. Or would he? The blame for each plot could be so easily laid on a few hapless slaves, all of whom would confess under Mousrom's arts of persuasion. They would confess to having done anything if they spent enough time in the Inquisitor's care. And there was no check nor any balance set in place to curtail the fat man's newly granted powers. No one who had authority to question the Minister of Intelligence himself-none save Ottoussama. Vegita felt the chill of ice down his spine melt away in rising fury. He was nearly vibrating with rage now. But Bardock did not stop there.

"It is a good thing, is it not, Ouji-sama, that I received word from Scopa's folk in time to relocate Bulma and the boy when they came for her?" Vegita nodded, a low growl rumbling inside his chest. "Can you see her in Mousrom's hands? Can you imagine the things he would have done to her? Can you picture that fat beast laying hands on her-"

Vegita uttered a howling shriek of maddened fury and dove downward, crashing feet first through the roof of the Council Chamber. He barely heard the collective gasps of the assembled Councilors as he strode forward, wrapped in a red burn of power, tail lashing, teeth bared. He could see no one and nothing but his father's impassive face. The others fell back before him as he came, a bit more quickly than was needful. Ottoussama did not moved or speak as Vegita stood before him. He slowly knelt down before the King's chair, the energy of his aura crackling the wood, warping the steel.

"I am returned from the gates of Hell, Ottoussama," he growled softly. "Give me your blessing that I may serve you once again and be revenged upon my enemies."

The cold, bird-black eyes searched his face for a long, deathly still moment. Behind him, Vegita could feel the Council holding its collective breath. Then Ottoussama lifted one hard steady hand, and lay it lightly on Vegita's head. "Welcome back," he intoned softly. "…my son."

Turna and several others broke the stillness that followed with a shout of joy. But one voice cut above the others. "We are all glad and amazed to see you recovered so quickly and completely, my prince."

Vegita was still staring into his father's expressionless face. Now, he rose, blazing like a torch inside the aura of his own power, and turned to gaze at Mousrom's thick-jowled, false smile-and he felt his power soar upward like a rocket. The Inquisitor seemed not to notice. He continued speaking in that same effusive, sugared tone. "We had thought you might be lost to us forever." The man never spoke a word, Vegita thought coldly, without giving it at least two shades of veiled insinuation.

"Hoped, more like," he said, too softly. Behind him, his father remained silent, letting the Inquisitor speak out of turn as though the presumptuous bastard spoke for the entire Council.

Mousrom's piggy eyes narrowed, but he continued to smile. "Ouji-sama, you mistake me-"

Vegita whipped forward and seized him by the throat, snarling like and enraged animal. "I have never mistaken you, torturer!" He slammed the fat man down onto the Council table, still gripping his neck. "I know you have besmirched my name in Council and among the nobles, though never through your own lips. I know you have schemed to have me slain before I was completely healed of my wounds." He squeezed the doughy flesh beneath his fingers and was rewarded with a gurgle. "And I know you have attempted more than once to take what is mine and rend it to pieces out of nothing more than spite!"

"Ou-sama…" Mousrom croaked. "…boy is unstable…help!"

Turna was laughing softly somewhere nearby.

"You are a panderer of rumor and half-truth," Vegita hissed into the Inquisitor's face. "You order a man's name disgraced, but never face his wrath in combat. You have slain millions, but never braved the danger of battle. You plant your enormous ass in my seat at Council, on my father's right hand, and do not expect a beating?! You are a coward, and an affront to every Saiyan warrior who ever shed blood for Vegita-sei. You are not worthy to be called Saiyan! Or to draw breath in my presence!" His fingers began to squeeze. It would take nothing to wring the life from this craven throat-slitter-but his hand froze as the big man lost consciousness with a rattling sigh. His heart was in his throat suddenly, and he was grateful, very grateful, that he had been trembling from head to toe with rage an instant before. For nor he was simply trembling with the effort to keep his face hard and immobile, to not cry out and sink to his knees under the weight of a host of memories, under a crushing wave of remembered pain. He knew he must do something, that me must speak, but his throat was so constricted he could barely breathe. "It is good," said a woman's voice at his shoulder, "that our Prince has learned to better master his temper, Ou-sama. A year ago, he would not have considered our need for such...necessities as Mousrom over the pleasure of pulling off his head." A rusty feminine chuckle. "Though I confess, I am disappointed that he did not."

Vegita stood slowly and tossed Mousrom's slack form against the nearest wall. He turned to meet the dark, dancing eyes of Articha. "I will call him out in single combat when the war is over," he told her through gritted teeth, trying to master the shudders still coursing through his body. "That will be and entertaining five seconds," she said.

One corner of her mouth was quirked up, the nearest she ever came to a smile. There were no questions that were seemly to ask or answer as one warrior to another. It occurred to him that she was pleased, honestly pleased to see him come back to himself. He heard her voice in the haunted depths of memory, calling to him, telling him to be strong, speaking gently when he finally crashed into the abyss of madness, as gently as Bulma soothing Romayn. And she looked...fine. Though he knew it was not so, knew the scars they had cut into her mind and body ran as deep and permanent as his own. But none of this could be said. And it would be unthinkable even to offer thanks, because of the memory of disgrace and humiliation it would raise.

_She is a very strong woman,_ Bulma had said.

"It is good to see you, General," he said in a formal tone. Because there was nothing else that could be spoken aloud.

She stood straight and tall, her arms folded on her chest. "And you, my prince." "Dine at my house tomorrow night, you and your mate," he told her. She would be able to tell him all that Bardock had not been privy to, and all his father might withhold from him until he had truly proven himself again.

"You honor my house, Ouji-sama."

"Out!" His father commanded abruptly. "All of you. And take that-" he gestured at Mousrom. "-with you. I will speak to my son alone."

Vegita stood motionless until he and his father were alone. The King stood and approached him, cold, black eyes boring into his, trying to read the soul inside. "How is it with you, boy? The truth." "I am well," Vegita said slowly. "But...I am not as I was." That was purest truth, at least. "That I can see," his father muttered. "What did you do, boy? Have someone drive you into a rage before you arrived?"

Vegita kept his face from flushing into a deep scarlet with a great deal of effort. "It worked," Ottousama grunted. "On all of them, except perhaps Articha. She has told me some of what was done to you both, perhaps things you have no clear memory of yourself. Can you go into battle as you are now?"

Vegita was silent. Here it was…and now that the moment had come, he found that the lie he had intended stuck in his throat. _I cannot…the lie would endanger the whole of the Empire. And when I meet Jeiyce in the field again…gods, how can I know how many triggers he left mined in my subconscious? He might turn me upon my own soldiers with __a word!_ He met his father's hard stare, saw that there was gray at the older man's temple's that had not been there a year ago, saw the dark shadows of utter exhaustion playing around his eyes. Saw that he did not need to answer the question.

"I would not have returned until I was sure that I am not a liability to you and to the Empire, Ottousama. But I have listened to the hyper wave broadcasts for weeks now, and I knew that there is no time left." He set his jaw and sank to one knee before his father's chair a second time. "Do with your servant as you judge best, Ou-sama. I will bow to the needs of Vegita-sei."

"You are less of a liability now than you were two years past, boy," Ottousama said with a gruff chuckle. His cold eyes were sparkling with pleasure. Vegita regarded him in open confusion. "You think before you speak," his father said. "Consider before you act. Check the full force of your rage when necessity demands it. And you put the good of the Empire over your own interests. The rest will come in time. When you are ready to lead this war again, I will send you out to face your enemy a third and final time. Until then, there is much to do on Vegita-sei, as you have relieved Mousrom of his stewardship in single combat…"

_How?_ Vegita wanted to ask. How had things come to such a pass that Mousrom had come so perilously close to tipping the scales of power in his favor? But he knew. The Inquisitor had made himself so indispensable in the absence of a royal heir, taking advantage of the King's need for a strong right arm, taking more and more liberties as his position became more and more rooted in utter necessity. Playing power games when the survival of the Empire was at stake. And Ottousama had given way to the man…choosing solidarity over his own security upon the throne. For his world. For his people. The King stood slowly, and did something he had seldom done unless ceremony demanded. He lay one hand on Vegita's shoulder. His grip was warm and firm.

"What you have endured will give you strength, boy. It will cool your youthful rages to cold cleverness in the heat of the moment. You have in you the makings of a king out of legend, though you still have much to learn. Bring Mousrom to heel here on Vegita-sei, and I will look to winning the war until you are ready for the field. Resilience is the greatest strength of our race, my son. And the old saying holds true. What does not kill a Saiyan…" Ottousama grinned wolfishly. "…will soon have great cause to regret not having done so!"

He took his leave of his father and strode through the dark, sepulchrous halls of the palace, so lost in his own thoughts he barely took any note of the hushed murmurs and whispers that followed him.

Disgraced...dishonored...And powerless to kill the one who had made the full extent of his-his injuries public knowledge. He made his way past the throngs of court officials, of petitioners, of barons and lords of the realm and simple guardsmen, not speaking or responding to any who were bold enough to address him, his temper growing more frayed with each step. Whisperers and stone casters! They had no concept or measure of the word pain, of the word torment. It was easy for a fool to judge what he did not understand...and feel a bit higher in his own little place in the scope of things by looking down upon the fall of the mighty. He was snarling with rage by the time he had reached the Great Round, the hub of the palace's spider's web of administrative offices. The more prudent fell back before him as he came. Those who stood and stared he tossed out of his way with an angry swipe. It soothed his ire in a direct, temporary fashion, but it would make no difference really. Wherever he went, all eyes would fall upon him...and most would turn away after a moment in agitated shame. He had been their leader, their general, their strong god of war. He was the Saiyan no Ouji. And he was their pride, the measure by which all warriors were judged. And his-his defeat and his captivity had wounded their sense of themselves, crushed their morale badly enough. The rumors of his broken madness were eating his people alive with a very personal sense of having been-been raped as a people. Of knowing their best, their strongest, their most favored son, had crawled on his belly at the enemies feet. He stopped, still fuming, but considering now. He knew he must take a measure of how deep the obstruction in his mind ran. He knew he must begin to push at the edges of the barrier the Red Prince had erected in his mind. But there was a more immediate matter he must attend to first, a matter that lay hand in hand with exploring the full extent of his new power, the unimaginable strength he must have gained...He set off in the direction of his own personal training domes, wondering what use his father had found for them in his absence. Nothing could have prepared him for what he found. The largest high gravity structure was a stinging fly's nest of very young warriors, all of them Elites of noble birth judging by the markings on their armor. "Get your tail around your waist, Cabaj, or I'll cut it off for you! Don't-!" The giant who was barking out commands and threats to the pack of adolescents scrimmaging above him had an air of confidence Vegita had never imagined possible in the man. The big warrior glanced down as Vegita stepped beside him casually and went pale with abject shock. In the metal rafters of the dome, the boys had halted as well, staring. Rikkuum frowned up at them and bellowed like a space port alarm.

"I didn't tell you little bastards to stop fighting! Get back to your bout or I'll gut the lot of you and feed your carcasses to the sea shrikes!" The young soldiers went hurriedly back to their battle. Rikkuum turned back to Vegita, a tentative, almost unbelieving smile poised on his lips. "Ouji-sama," he said slowly. "They told me you were wounded so badly you might not survive. Are you all better now?" There was no guile or mockery in those words, nor in the earnest expression on the big man's face.

"I am well," Vegita said curtly. "And ready to train. I have not fought in...in a very long time. I must prepare myself to destroy my enemies."

"I am to train with you again?" The great lummox looked like a child gazing upon his fondest dream when Vegita nodded. Rikkuum snapped his head up and shouted at the boys in the air. "Everyone out! We will train tomorrow if Vegita-ouji's schedule allows." He grinned down at Vegita as the youngsters zipped out, nearly bursting to run and tell the entire city that the Prince was alive and whole, preparing to fight again. "I am happy you are alive, Ouji-sama!" Rikkuum said as he began stripping off the weighted plates he wore in the high gravity bubble, and donning his old Tsiru-jin blast shield armor, the armor that had kept him alive in many of his bouts with Vegita.

"You father made me a teacher for some of the stronger cubs on Vegita-sei, but...a warrior pines for a challenge, an opponent stronger than himself, to test his limits and increase his strength." His grin turned ferocious. "I was feeling my life was over when you found me, Ouji-sama. I have not had a worthy, strong master since Lord Frieza-sama died. A true soldier lives to serve a master stronger than himself!"

Vegita stared into the giant warrior's open, fatuous expression of faithful devotion and hid a grin when it occurred to him that the look on his face resembled nothing so much as Bulma's dogs, trotting adoringly at his heels. A flicker of movement caught his eye and he saw Rikkuum's training class peering in through the shield view ports on the dome, jostling and shoving each other for a position in front of the glass. There were several older faces pressed against the high, overhead windows. Word of his return was spreading.

If they wanted a show, he would give them one. An exhibition to remind them forcibly of his strength would go a long way toward quashing Mousrom's slanders, that had left many in the Capital whispering that Vegita was hidden away, a mad, raving wreck, never to recover...He hissed through his teeth as the rage boiled up inside him again. These were hearsay, unfounded rumors the Inquisitor had seeded here and there, that grew with each retelling. None of which bore any hard facts. To have given out an exact account of his injuries and mental state would have been to betray himself. Vegita must give his people concrete tales of things witnessed with their own eyes. And when the evidence of things seen conflicted with fifth hand tell-tales, they would put aside the accounts of his broken madness as slanderous untruth, swearing each to the other that they had never put any stock in such foul liable. It would not erase his disgrace at having been defeated and taken alive, or restore their faith in his leadership. But it would douse the bulk of the added fuel Mousrom had thrown on the fire of public opinion, and give lie to the worst of what his people believed.

"Rikkuum."

"Vegita-sama?"

"It is a good day. The air is warm and the sky is clear. I do not wish to fight indoors." He marched out of the dome with Rikkuum behind him, trailed now by a growing throng of others as they passed through and out of the interior training grounds. The big man kept pace with him as he rose slowly into the air above the Palace. Half a dozen figures ascended to meet them, sweeping upward in an arrowhead formation. Bardock and the other warriors behind him halted. An eager smirk was lighting his scarred face, giving it an almost boyish air.

"My prince," he said with a grin. "Could you use a few more sparring partners?" Vegita bared his teeth with an answering smile. "All of you and Rikkuum at once! Now!" They leapt at him as one, Rikkuum's greater strength and speed granting him the honor of being the first Vegita pummeled. He began increasing his power by slow increments, flaring steadily upward as they darted in and out, circling him like pack predators. His Ki-his Ki was rising like a missile, filling him with a wild, fierce joy that sang inside every fiber of his body. He threw them down, sending them crashing into the blade spires of the Royal Palace, slamming through roofs and walls of the city below them. He caught fleeting glimpses of upturned heads on the ground, of ever-growing crowds of people watching, open-mouthed. And his power soared higher still, threatening to spin out of control as though he'd caught a hurricane in one hand as it lashed in from the Western Sea...and still there was more he had not called upon, could not yet summon because he lacked the control to hold it in check. It was that enormous.

They burned the crystalline blue of the morning sky to red with their auras. He was shining like a newborn sun, he realized. They fought on. And as time passed in a glorious, quick step blur, as the morning gave way to midday, others began to join in as Bardock's squad members grew too injured to move. And gods, he was still holding back to keep from killing them. Vegita sensed, deep inside the well of his power, the he had only tapped the surface of what he was now capable of summoning. That ten fold this near god-like power lay just out of his reach, just beyond some intangible barrier in his mind and heart. If he could grasp it...he would be a god indeed. Nothing would be beyond him.

By the time the shadows began to lengthen toward evening, he had seen a dozen complete rotations of fresh Elites, groups he was vaguely aware that Bardock was changing out at the top of each hour. None of the higher-powered nobles had blinked at Bardock's command in ordering Vegita's opposing sparring squads. They were too eager to try their hands and feel in their own battered bones just how strong their prince had grown.

Vegita left the central beaurocratic offices and large sections of the palace itself in need of serious repair by the time they broke for the day at dusk. He had very deliberately hurled his opponents into and through the main offices of Central Intelligence most often, but the entire Capital took a beating as the day wore on.

He was rusty and imprecise, the wages of a full year of physical idleness. But the power...again, he was struck by the mental picture of himself holding the tail of a cyclone that might tear himself and everyone around him to pieces if it slipped free of his grasp. He would need to train like a madman to simply control this new power.

Incredibly, Bardock and Rikkuum were still standing at the end of the day. Vegita did not have so much as a nick or a bruise. No one had even come close to tagging him. He left the Capital humming like a live wire with talk as he departed.

"Next time," Bardock said painfully as he limped behind Vegita into his hillside home's hearthroom, "I will mark you, my Prince."

"It is good for a soldier to have goals," Vegita told him. "Unrealistic though they be."

"Edeeta 'n Poppa!" A high voice called from beneath roughly two hundred pounds of dog. Bardock frowned irritably, perhaps because Bulma had taught the boy to call him by such a foolish nickname as 'Poppa.' Or perhaps because Romayn had greeted 'Poppa' second. Vegita lifted the boy from beneath his slobbery attackers and sat him on his feet, while Bardock eased his bruised, bleeding body onto the hearthrim. The older man snickered at his son's damp appearance. The animals had licked the brat until he was soaked from head to toe. Vegita knelt and frowned down at the boy, watching in fascination as the child drew his own eyebrows together in a deliberate, perfect imitation of Vegita's expression.

"You enemies have overborne you, boy." He turned Romayn back to face the dogs. "When you are out-numbered, you must move faster. Understand?"

Romayn nodded eagerly, still glowering, looking like a furious miniature of Bardock. The boy waded back into the fray. He whipped around the dogs, darting in and out like one of the flower-sipping insects in Bulma's garden. Bardock stood up, his half-grin slipping off his scarred face, to be replaced with wide-eyed amazement. Then Vegita saw it too. The boy was streaking around the yipping animals, circling and rushing in to yank a tail before darting back again...and his feet were not touching the floor.

"He's not even eighteen months old," Bardock said softly.

"I did not fly until I was well past three years," Vegita muttered.

"Gotcha!" Romayn bawled. He caught Yaro in a headlock and began aggressively licking the hapless beast's head.

Vegita sat down slowly, more unnerved than he would care to admit. Had anyone ever measured the boy on a scouter? No...of course not. Romayn had never seen the inside of the infant conditioning units, never been through any sort of official evaluation. Vegita frowned internally. When he had been a boy, less than ten years old certainly, a child had been born with a birth power level of...had it been ten thousand? Something that monstrously high. His father had commanded both the brat and all his kin put down, and their bodies tossed into Vegita-sei's sun. Because of the threat such a child presented to the throne. The King of Vegita-sei ruled by the old laws, the rule of the fittest, the strongest. And if the King was no longer the strongest, if any warrior felt he was sufficient to the task, he had every right to challenge the King for his throne. If the boy was indeed some sort of prodigy, Ottousama would-He shook off such foolish concerns. The boy was an uncommonly strong child of strong parents. And perhaps…perhaps the unconventional mode of his rearing was creating anomalies in his development.

"Should he be speaking at this age?" Vegita wondered aloud, sitting back in his hearthside chair. His muscles were pleasantly sore, burning with the good, familiar sting of over-taxation. Bardock shrugged in answer to his question.

"The child development texts in the incu-ward say no." Bulma was carefully skirting the child/dog melee as she carried a tankard of goldberry wine, followed by two whirring, vaguely anthropomorphic machines. The contraptions were bearing a mountain of food in their six arms. They began to set the table matter-of-factly, then they whizzed back into the kitchens for more food. Vegita noticed Bardock was eyeing the things warily as well. "Not in whole sentences anyway," she went on, pouring both men a cup of the warm, amber wine. "I think it's just inherent Saiyan preciousness and an uncommon amount of early mental stimulation that-what?" Bulma put her hands on both hips, frowning at their uneasy expressions. "Have neither of you seen a servo-bot before?"

"Momma made 'em," Romayn said.

"They can do everything a humanoid slave can do, and they don't need to sleep or eat. And they tend to make fewer mistakes. Try them this one time. If they still give you the creeps, we can have Batha and Caddi, or someone else replace them." She scooped the boy up under one arm. "Are you hungry, Rom-kun? Or did you fill up on dog hair?"

"I'm hungry!" He cried, wiggling to be set on his feet again. She sat him down with a sad little sigh. The boy's days letting her tote him everywhere were past forever. She regarded both men with raised eyebrows. "How about you two? Did demolishing half the city work up an appetite?"

Vegita forgot about the serving machines and dug in, nodding absent, full-mouthed permission for Bardock to join them at table. They ate like slaves shoveling admantium ore for over an hour before Vegita was sated enough to turn his mind to anything else. "You made these…things?"

She rose and pulled Romayn off his perch atop one of the bots in question. The boy had been riding it back and forth as it cleared plated and added new ones from the kitchens, eating as he went. "They're my father's design. My people didn't believe in slavery, so we built our servants. I told you I would have a surprise for you tonight, Vegita. Stop." The servo-bot halted instantly, and she leaned down and touched a latch shielded button on its side. It erupted in a burst of metal resin smoke, and vanished. Bulma raise a thumb-sized pellet from the floor and laid it in Vegita's hand.

"I cracked the Maiyosh-jin miniaturization technology secret," she said simply. "Mousrom's techs were going down the wrong theoretical path. I've diagrammed the entire construction schematics."

Vegita and Bardock stared at her.

"There's more," she went on. She lay another pellet on the dining table and sprang its catch with practiced ease. A holo-projection of a solar system spun lazily around inside a-Vegita frowned. The bluish force field encircling the small star and its satellites was not a hologragh. "Bardock," she said, stepping back, behind Vegita. "Try and blast it."

Bardock raised a hand slowly and released a small ball of energy at the glowing orb. It struck the pale, bluish light around the miniature and rebounded. Bardock quickly hurled a quelling rush of Ki to keep the ricochet from tearing a hole in one of the walls.

"Boom," said Romayn softly.

"It's a shield that will screen out even the capsulized plasma nukes Jeiyce and his friends are so fond of," Bulma said softly. "Nothing short of a planet's sun going nova will pierce it, and it can expand to cover a world or an entire solar system."

Bardock was shaking his head in stunned amazement. "I wondered what the hell you were doing day and night last winter. Why you threw that fit when we had to abandon your work and relocate a second time. But-but gods, girl!"

"You-" Vegita was trying to process the magnitude of this achievement. "Woman, you-" He knew he was sputtering like an imbecile, but he could not seem to get a full question past his lips. It had taken her less than a year, working alone, to work out the miniaturization science that every master engineer in the Empire had failed to crack. And that did not even address this shield she had wrought…

"We had a technology very, very similar on Chikyuu," she told him. "I started out with pieces of the puzzle no on else knew. But the safety shield…" Her eyes glowed. "That's all my own. I'm pretty proud of how well it turned out." She held Romayn a little tighter, her eyes darkening. "It will save lives. No more Saiyan colony worlds nuked from orbit in their sleep by invisible attackers, the soldiers and the-the children alike."

"This will need to be tested on a grander scale, but-" He shook his head, feeling dazed. "Woman…this will give us the breathing room we need from their cloaked sneak attacks!"

An hour later, Vegita stood beside his father, Turna and Articha-the only two members of the Council still in no way under Mousrom's sway-as they crowded around the little villa's dining table to watch Bulma demonstrate her 'capsules' and the shield a second time. Vegita had summoned them all to his own home rather than transport the devices to another location and be seen by unfriendly eyes. Ottoussama was silent for a long time, turning over each and every implication of such a defensive technology in his mind. Slowly his mouth curled into a grin. Then he burst unexpectedly into a loud, hearty chuckle.

"I have seldom been so glad as I am at this moment to have spared someone's life, girl!" He sobered after a moment, and studied Bulma's lovely face and humbly downcast eyes shrewdly. "Though I think you are too dangerous to run loose in my Empire," he said cryptically.

"We can set the factories in the east to construct these shields in mass quantities as soon as the integrity and durability of the technology is tested on a grand scale by the royal college of engineers, Ou-sama!" Turna told him eagerly.

The King grunted. "The girl will have to sit down and explain it to the fools first."

"I will make the necessary arrangements, Ou-sama, and we can…"

His father and the grizzled, smaller man were striding outside, the King issuing a steady stream of commands, Turna already on his hyper wave link, calling a team of techs to come and take charge of the prototype and Bulma's design files. Vegita watched them go. He knew his father would expect him to be at his shoulder, but something was niggling at his mind, a shadow of an idea. He moved down the darkened hall to the room Bulma had converted at some point into a small medical library, and began searching furiously through the shelves of books and discs for what he sought. He found it after a moment, a copy of one of the same medical journals Scopa had brought to Bardock's house, and flipped through the text for something he remembered having-he found it!

Back in the hearthroom, he found Bulma and Articha deep in conversation. He did not stop to wonder what two such dissimilar women could find to talk about so intently.

"Bulma!" He thrust the medical treatise at her. "Can you build this, with a few modifications? As an added feature of your shield?"

She stared at the specs for the rad plasma stabilizer invented by the physician scholars of Zapria-sei to permanently convert the lethal weapon's heavier elements into a lower energy solidity that might be fed to Kobal-jin amphibians as a treatment to impede the growth of cancerous viroids.

"It could be designed," Bulma said slowly. "To be part of the shield system. And it'll turn the hot components of the nukes to rock when the missiles strike its field." She glanced up at him with a small smile. "Yes. I can build it."

A bit later that night, Vegita found his father and Turna hammering out the last details of the quickest possible manufacturing scheme for Bulma's surprises should the tech's report prove favorable in the morning. The addition of the rad plasma stabilizer to the shield sent Turna into another furious set of recalculations.

The black of full night was giving over to blue when they concluded the last of the details of production. "If it is what it seems to be, I will set every other production facility aside for its manufacture," his father said. "This is your project, boy. Appropriate any and all resources of the Empire you need to get it done. We must have these shields in place before the moon arrives in the fall." His father stopped with a sharp eye before he left. Behind them, Turna was still hunched over the Council table, scribbling furiously.

"Bardock has taken Nappa's place as your lieutenant?" Ottousama asked quizzically.

"Yes," Vegita said slowly, unsure of where this was leading.

"And you have taken his son to foster?"

"It is a more fitting payment of blood debt than any amount of wealth, Ottousama," Vegita told him.

"Your bed slave designs counter weapons in her spare time, struts through your house with her head high as though she were its mistress, and the pair of you guard your affections in company less well than Turna and Articha when they were first bound under the moon." His father snorted. "And, worst of all, you brought that pair of useless, yipping beasts back to the Capital."

Vegita's chest tightened. His father was right. He had…forgotten himself in his urgency to let the King and his chief councilors see Bulma's new machines. He had forgotten how the world expected him to behave. But…it would have been 'normal' for him to have joined Ottousama and Turna after Bulma's initial test in his house. It would have been 'normal' to have given no pause and no thought to the medical treatise he had read more than a month ago and how it might be used to destroy plasma nukes inside their missiles. There was no defiance in his words, no trace of it in his voice, but he stood his ground, and shook his head firmly.

"I am different, Ottousama. They will see it soon or late. But I cannot go back, only forward. Nor would I wish to. If…" He paused, trying to sort out how best to speak his thoughts. "If they had not taken me craftily on Avaris, I would have soon fallen through my own folly. Because I lived and breathed inside my rage at not having all the galaxy ordered as I wished each instant of my life. Because I never once stopped to think before I acted or considered any course of action other than brute force. Before I went to war, had the throne fallen to me by some mischance, I would have led Vegita-sei to her doom by now."

"I know all these things, boy," his father snapped. "But you must have a care how you are perceived. You have only been back one day. Tonight, your people are in a joyous uproar over your return, over the strength you so cleverly displayed all this day. But Mousrom's next ploy will be to discredit the stability of your mind, and the smallest twitch in an unfamiliar direction will be seen as proof of his lies. Articha and Turna are to be trusted, but you must guard your every waking move in other company. And as to your private life…" Ottousama glowered at him in the dimmed light of the darkened Council Chamber. "This-" His face twisted in distaste. "This 'family' you allowed to form around yourself during you illness will be noted. It will be seen as weakness and softness of mind on your part."

"I will guard myself more closely," Vegita said curtly.

"Anything a ruler or a crown prince dotes upon openly is a danger to him, boy," his father said balefully. "And may be used to control him. If the thing he dotes upon is not already controlling him herself."

"I am governed by no one and nothing," Vegita snarled softly, "but necessity and my own honor." He took a deep breath, willing the anger rising up inside him to still itself, willing the cold words poised in his lips to be silent. "Have you not always told me it is just to reward faithful service? She drew me back to myself, Ottousama. But for her, I might have remained 'that gentle boy' with no past forever. At least until you were forced to put me down."

"I do not discredit what she has done for you," his father said. "Or these counter weapons she has devised. She is not mine, but for such a great service to the Empire, I would set her free."

"I have done so already," Vegita murmured.

"And still she stays…" Ottousama's face hardened with displeasure and something like worry. "Then set her aside and take another concubine." It was not a suggestion. Vegita did not answer for a long, tense moment.

"Not," he said at last, with cold finality, "For all the wealth in the Empire, my father."

Ottousama regarded him another moment in glowering, almost tangible tension. Then he uttered a soft growl of a sigh. He shook his head and spoke the next words like a chill foreboding of the grave. "As you wish. But mark me, boy. No good will come if it. And I fear you will weep blood before the end of it. Before you look your last on her, she will make you wish you never drew breath."

By the time he returned to the villa it was less than an hour til dawn. He passed Bulma's workroom, heard a metallic clang and soft conversation, followed by the sound of women's laughter. Articha's voice drifted in through the closed door.

"…trained all three of my sons in my own household before they went to the children's barracks at four. He is a very early bloomer, but they say his father is uncommonly intelligent."

"I've been so worried they'll think he's…defective in some way," Bulma said softly.

"You have not gentled the boy as greatly as you fear. He has a strong will to fight."

So, she had found someone to answer all her questions about Romayn, Vegita mused. It was odd though that Articha should take even a passing interest in a royal concubine, a former slave, no less. But then, perhaps the general was…different now. As different as Vegita himself, after the sentence in Hell they had each endured. But…his stomach clenched in shame as he heard her voice calling to him, telling his to be strong, to remember who he was. Offering him the surplus of her own strength, regardless of what had been done to her. Articha had never lost herself. Never broken. Perhaps this odd affinity between the two women was like calling to like. The fact that they were both 'unbreakables'.

He sensed a flicker of Bardock's muted Ki in the library and pushed open the door to see the older man pouring over a thick ledger volume. Romayn was lying on his back on the cho-deer skin in the center of the room, a sleeping canine on either side.

"I had an idea, Ouji-sama." Bardock held up one of the high pile of volumes, all bearing the crest of Maiyosh House, and handed it to Vegita.

"I brought these from the great library at Med Center. It is a financial history of Maiyosh-sei. A paper trail of all worlds that have ever been owned by Maiyosh House. I've found three already that are not on any standardized star charts."

"Edeeta's my friend," Romayn said from the floor with a drowsing smile.

"Go to sleep, boy," Bardock said absently.

"You are thinking," Vegita said, studying the accounts of worlds bought from the Tsiru-jin planet trade or colonized by Maiyosh force of arms, "that one of these worlds might be Je-" he ground his teeth, and began again a few seconds later. "-might be his main base?"

"It would have to be a world his people knew intimately," Bardock nodded. "You cannot simply find an uncharted system and set up base sight unseen. That is suicide."

"Yaro's my friend," Romayn murmured.

"I am in auspicious company," Vegita said with a faint smirk.

"With your leave, Ouji-sama," Bardock said. "I would like to search the whole of Maiyosh House's records archived in the Royal Library for something that might give them away. It will take a bit of time, but it may yield great results."

"Do so," Vegita said firmly.

"Poppa's my friend," Romayn said.

"I will only be your friend if you go to sleep," said Bardock with a glowering frown that looked as though it was hiding a grin.

"…you said so…" The boy said around a huge yawn.

Bardock gestured to the pile of large books on the study. "I can review everything here first and feed the relevant information into a computer to cross-reference everything a self-sufficient military base would need with each world's resources."

Vegita smiled grimly. It was a search strategy no one had thought of as yet, and there was a great deal of logical merit to it.

"…said we'd be friends next time…" The boy on the floor sighed softly.

Bardock froze in mid-gesture, his mouth poised to frame words. He turned very slowly and stared at his son, a strange, almost frightened expression dancing across his scarred features. "When did I say that, Romayn?" He asked softly.

The boy issued another bone-cracking yawn, his eyes closed, one arm draped over Baka. "Before…when I was a big boy." He was asleep.

Vegita frowned curiously as Bardock's face drained of all color. The older man sat down unsteadily in the chair behind him. "She could not have told him…"

"Bulma?" Vegita asked, eyeing the man's blanched pallor. He looked like a man who'd just seen his world unceremoniously inverted.

"She was not there when I killed him," Bardock whispered. "We found Kakarott easily when we landed on Chikyuu. He was training under the apprenticeship of a native warrior. A strong old fellow. My son attacked me when I killed his sensei, and the other boy fled to seek help. Gods, he was a strong brat…But he'd failed his infant purge mission, and his-his wits were addled as well. Some injury he sustained on planetfall, probably." Bardock took a deep breath. "In any case, the law is clear on the fate of a child who fails an infant purge. I-I told him I was his father. I pointed at my tail as proof…and he stood down and dropped his guard. He said he could not forgive me for slaying the old man. I told him perhaps we would be friends in his next life. And I put a hole through his heart."

Vegita felt an icy chill shoot down his spine. "No one else was present?"

"No one. I told my squad to stay well back while I did what I knew I must do. God of gods…" he said softly. "I thought the girl was mad the way she keeps insisting the boy is-" He broke off, and shook his head as though trying to get a firmer grasp on a new ripple in his reality. "While you were at war, Bulma told me that Chikyuu's guardian demi-god spoke to her when my crew began the purge. He told her _his_ god bade him give her a message. A prophesy. He told her that Kakarott's soul would return to her soon, because one day, the lives of every living thing in the galaxy would rest upon his shoulders. He told her she was to guide the boy to his destiny, but that she must walk a long, dark road first…And that she would fail her charge if she let herself give in to hate."

Vegita gazed down at the sleeping boy. "You are speaking of things out of legend," Vegita said with false certainty.

"Rebirth is everyday magic, Ouji-sama," Bardock muttered. "All men accept it as fact. And it is said that those the gods choose of their instruments are sometimes reborn with the memories of their past lives intact."

Vegita was silent, wondering how much he owed to the Chikyuu-jin god's admonition to his woman that she not give way to hate. He wanted to bark some harsh reprimand to the man for such a fool's fancy. He would have like to shrug it off as another sign of his woman's superstitious bent. But…

_Before…when I was a big boy…_No child of sixteen months would say such an unnerving-

"It does not matter," Vegita said finally. "Believe he is some divinely graced savior of all life if you wish. We must look to the enemy at hand."

"You are right, Ouji-sama," Bardock agreed quietly, falling back into his comfortable pragmatism with relief.

There was too much to do in the days that followed, too many shortages of supplies, too many problems that seemed to have no answer until late into the night, too many decisions in the simple day to day administration of the Empire piled atop the production of the shields. After only a week of this, he began to develop a new respect for his father that bordered on awe. And in the midst of all this, he must also find time to beat and tear his muscles, his reflexes, and his stamina back into peak fighting efficiency. Three weeks and the royal engineers had replicated a small rad shield based on Bulma's specs, and were ready to test a planetary scale prototype on the second moon of fifth planet in Vegita-sei's own solar system. Six carriers, loaded down with hastily manufactured plasma nukes, launched enough missiles to turn Vegita-sei's frigid sister world to dust. The shield held without a hitch. In the secondary test, Bulma's suggestion to the elite engineering core, who would have cheerfully burned her at the stake out of nothing more than green-eyed jealousy, a series of bombs were taken through the initial net around the planetoid, in simulation of a nuke smuggled onto Vegita-sei under the enemy's invisibility cloaking technology. The two terrorist bombings in the south had been accomplished with bombs brought to Vegita-sei on Saiyan ships.

The second test went off as flawlessly as the first. The plasma stabilizer field built into Bulma's shield turned the nukes into canisters of harmless coal dust rock. Vegita commandeered a dozen plants in the eastern seaboard region and began to work through the plans to refit them for mass production each night, with Turna and Bulma adding organizational and technical amendments to his original ideas.

All this while, his father led the war. All this while, his father fought in combat, leading the fleets and forces of the Empire in a foundering attempt to buy Vegita the time he needed to raise a buffer of safety. It was not long before the whispers began, before eyes began to look at him in askance, in silent apprehension, as it became more and more apparent with each passing day that Vegita had no intention of returning to the field. As speculation, fueled by Mousrom's rumor mill, as to why this was so began to earn him apprehensive glances everywhere he went. But there was no help for it at the moment, and in any case, the shields were all that mattered. Once they were in place, the entire Empire would see why this secret project had been set before every other manufacturing effort on Vegita-sei. And why their Prince had thrown all his might into it instead of a head on battle with an invisible enemy.

Each night, he sat in Bulma's garden, working to overcome the…the obstacle that prevented him from going into battle. Each morning, he sat on his father's right hand in Council, or led the meetings himself if the King was off world, marking Mousrom's ominous submissiveness. Bardock's report on previously Maiyosh-owned worlds, all meeting the criteria of a potential base, gleaned from more than a month of eye-straining research on the scarred soldier's part, sent Turna into a fit of self-deprecating morose that the royal bean counter had not thought of such a thing first.

On the night before the first and largest of the shield production plants was to go on line, Vegita sat frowning over the security plans for the factory-a factory which could not under any circumstances be left open to sabotage. He frowned down at the scattered specs strewn across the dining table. If there was a hole in the security strategy, he could not see it-but that did not mean it was not there.

"It is done, my prince," Turna told him, scribbling hastily on his hand comp, pulling up stats on potential sights to ground the shield generators on the nearest of Vegita-sei's colony worlds. "The plants are as secure as they can be. We must turn our minds now to securing the finished product when we distribute the generators among the colonies."

Yaro and Baka, lazing beneath the table, suddenly raised their heads in unison. They growled, haunches arched, hair bristling. It was a sound he had never heard either animal make in earnest, though they snarled and nipped in play with Romayn every day. Vegita had left the garden doorway open, to let the cool, damp breeze that held a promise of rain later that night sweep in and take the heat humid summer heat with it.

Vegita scanned the projected completion dates. Three weeks until the first planetary scale shield would roll off the line, ready to be erected on Vegita-sei. Another month before the first shipment of the carrier-sized devices could be encapsulated and transported to the colonies. Too much time. There had to be a way to cut the production time even more. Perhaps…perhaps Bulma's little army of servo-bots could be juiced up to increase speed on the assembly line.

"Woman!" He bellowed. He had not seen her since they had all taken a hasty meal together just after nightfall, and it was nearly midnight now. Below the table, the dogs continued to rumble and whine.

"The strikes on Skirat, Pikach, Maytu, and a dozen other worlds were accomplished without the benefit of miniaturized nukes," Turna was saying. "The tech slaves, or rather, the Red Network operatives masquerading as loyal tech slaves, sabotaged the shields and sensor nets on those worlds."

Bulma emerged from her workshop, a smudge of something black on one side of her nose, her mussed hair bound up above her head in a top knot. The same black grease on her face was covering the front of the engine mechanic's overalls she was wearing. She looked hot, tired, irritable…and utterly beautiful. He felt a foolish smirk begin to slide across his face, which only seemed to annoy her more.

"How may I serve you, Ouji-sama?" She asked waspishly. His smirk widened.

"The plants use a full compliment of your servo mechanoids for production," he told her, after explaining what was needed. "The facilities are guarded by Saiyan warriors with above average technical expertise. The planet based hubs of the shields will need heavy guard as well. What we need is better security and faster production."

"Two things," she said crisply. "I can go around to each of the plants and tweak the bots one at a time, for higher speed. It'll burn their processors out quickly, but we'll only need them for a few months anyway. Also…I can add another layer of security by personally inspecting the shields, every one of them, before they go on the transports. I could also-"

Yaro bared his teeth and snarled hatefully, as the thing both animals had sensed made itself known. Mousrom lumbered slowly into the arch of the door, and bowed low. How long, Vegita wondered coldly, had the bastard been lurking by the door, listening? Turna echoed his own thoughts, in his quiet, gravelly voice, an instant later.

"If you ever breed these animals, Ouji-sama, I would gladly have one for my own household," he murmured. "An animal that can scent an enemy's presence quicker than we can is a valuable creature."

"My humblest apologies for disturbing you at such a late hour, my Prince," the Inquisitor said. "But there is an urgent matter that needs addressing." His oily gaze swept the others, lingering on Bulma for an instant too long, crawling over her body in an assessing manner that made Vegita snarl like one of the dogs beneath the table.

"Mousrom," he said softly. "If you so much as glance in my woman's direction again, I will gut you where you stand."

The big man's eyes glinted with quickly hidden fear laced with malice. But he lowered his eyes obediently.

"Tell me your errand!" Vegita snapped. He did not invite the man past his threshold, so Mousrom merely stood there, fingering a stack of documents in his hand.

"I have a list of names of suspected enemies of the Empire, all of whom have been put to question, Ouji-sama." Mousrom smiled like a kindly old tutor, watching Vegita's face avidly. "Vipers in my own bosom, in fact. They are all former medics from Med Center whom I took to aid in…extending the life expectancy of the more valuable suspects under my attentions." Bulma had made a soft little choking noise. Vegita snatched the list from his hands.

Less than two months. It had taken Mousrom less than that to find all of Scopa's contacts, medics whose knowledge in the service of healing had been perverted under the Inquisitor's command. Medics who had sworn their service to Vegita, though they had yet to give him any useful information of the fat man's movements and designs. Mousrom would have spotted such rank ammeters in no time.

"I have the name of the man to whom they report, their cell leader," Mousrom went on. "But he is a free employee of Med Center, and thus, under your personal protection. In fact, I believe he was at one time a slave in your own household. In any case, I need your permission to take him."

Scopa…

Vegita eyed him coldly and said the last thing Mousrom could have expected. The truth. "They were not Red Network. Scopa's folk were monitoring your actions at my command. I must be sure of all my servants, Minister."

Mousrom blinked at his in abject surprise. "Surely you do not doubt my loyalty to Vegita-sei," the fat man said, almost incredulously.

Vegita wondered which had thrown the Inquisitor off more-being spied on, or his own blunt, flat honesty. It must be something the man seldom encountered. "You always swear your loyalty to Vegita-sei," he said. "But never to the throne."

The Intelligence Minister's face went beet red with fury.

"A prince has the luxury of trusting no one, Mousrom," Vegita went on coldly. "You will return my servants to me…if they are still alive."

"They live," Mousrom's lips twitched. "After a fashion. Though I fear they may never be quite right again. The broken never are. But…you know that, do you not, Ouji-sama?"

The Inquisitor was hurled into the stone tiles of the threshold, indenting a circular section with his body, before Vegita even realized he had struck him. He knelt, gripping the man's collar and shaking him like a rag doll. "You must take as much pleasure in receiving pain as in inflicting it to constantly tax me so, Mousrom!"

"I spoke the plainest truth!" Mousrom spat through a mouthful of loose teeth. "I shall do it again. You were a thoughtless, spoiled young fool before the Red Prince took you into his care. A danger and a liability to the throne and the Empire. Now, you are a weak, mentally-unstable, soft-"

Vegita roared an enraged oath and drew back his hand to ram it through the fat man's heart-and collapsed with a shriek as the pain rose up and swallowed him inside memory, the images of a hundred, a thousand recollected torments, all set to the song of Jeiyce of Maiyosh's soft, mocking laughter.

"My Prince!" Turna was trying to turn his spasming body over.

"He's not breathing!" Bulma was saying .

He could not breathe, could not draw in even a tiny gasp of air.

"I thought as much," Mousrom's voice bore an odd mix of poorly veiled admiration and clinical detachment. "Subliminal mines!" A short bark of malicious laughter. "He cannot kill. Gods, what a devilishly cruel and clever thing to do to a Saiyan warrior! You will have to knock him out, my girl. I imagine he'll asphyxiate if you don't."

A single solid blow fell and he knew nothing more.

He woke to a soft hand caressing his forehead. Bulma's face faded in, and she only stared at him, her expression an artful mask that would have done a Saiyan proud.

"Close the door behind you, girl," his father said shortly. Bulma rose and left quietly. Vegita sat slowly, staring up into his father's hard, angry face, feeling more shame than he would have thought possible. It clenched inside him like a dose of deadly poison.

"I do not need to tell you that you should have told me," Ottousama said.

"I did not know how deep the geas ran until tonight." Vegita set his teeth. "I learned as I was preparing to return to the Capital that there was a…block around the act of killing in my mind." He closed his eyes, remembering how the simple act of swatting a summer insect off his arm, of willing the thing dead and following through on the act, had sent him into a seizure of gasping, debilitating pain. Only Bardock had been present to see it, and the attack had been over in minutes. Since his return, he had wrestled each evening with the compulsion in Bulma's flower garden, trying to kill the garden slugs that had begun to feast upon her plants and drink from the rich soil as the weather grew hotter, the rain less frequent. The reaction was stronger, perhaps because the slugs were larger, more intelligent, but little by little, the fits were becoming less violent, as he killed the things in practice each night. Bardock had suggested that, judging by the severity of the attacks from killing such lowly creatures, it would be very dangerous to experiment with killing a sentient being until he had…worked his way up the food chain, so to speak.

"I knew that when I set my will to kill any living thing, it would come upon me as-as though I were in their hands once more. Since I returned, I have made progress in…breaching the block. Though obviously, I have a great way to go." He met his father's eyes. "I would have waited until I was completely healed, Ottousama. But…there was no more time left to me. I was needed. Even as I am now, I am needed."

His father was silent. "By tomorrow," he said finally, in a voice like the bass toll of death bells. "The entire Capital will know. No one will follow you, or even heed your words now, boy. And I-" The King grated out the words as though his mouth were full of razors, as though the act of speaking his next sentence sliced his jaw open to the bone. "I must give you place in Council to your enemy…and discard you as an unfit successor to my throne."

"Father…" Vegita choked, before he could stop himself from speaking.

"There is no time left, as you say," the King went on mechanically. "The moon is coming in three months time. Vegita-sei will be at her most vulnerable and ripe for an assault. We must be united, and your presence at my side would cause dissent." His father studied him with an eye that saw through all his pretensions of normalcy. That saw though everything, and had from the beginning. "I have no doubt that any attempts to slay you will be painfully unsuccessful, though not lethal, to the challengers who will seek your life after tonight. I will not see your dispossession be a permanent thing. I will help you as much as I may to set yourself to rights, my son, and take your rightful place, once again. I will not let the Red Prince take my son from me. He shall not have that victory!"

He lay staring up at the ceiling after his father departed. There was no grief, no pain, no shame. No rage. He could not seem to feel anything at all. He was utterly numb. The quiet click of the door latch, and Bulma reentered the room. She sat beside him, not speaking, only staring at him for the longest time, her blue eyes like bottomless wells of still sadness. Had her eyes always held that deep, almost immeasurable sink of mourning? He had never once noticed it until he woke to the sight of her face at Bardock's house. The first beautiful memory impressed upon the blank slate of his memory after Avaris.

"You cannot be grieving for me," he whispered.

"I'm not," she said. "You aren't dead."

"No," he replied dully. "I am worse than dead."

"No," she snapped. "You are feeling sorry for yourself."

He frowned up at her, stunned. There was no anger at her for those hard biting words, where before, he would have been hard put to reign in his rage, hard put to keep from killing her. And though this was not a bad thing, it was another glaring statement of how much of him they had changed, muted…broken. He had no words of reply to her cold response, though he could not have been more taken aback by them if she had suddenly gained fighting power and beat him senseless.

"You don't realize it," she went on, less angrily. "But you love your world and your people more than you'll ever love me or your father. You started to realize that on the day Arbatsu fell, and since you came back, you've used every means at your disposal-not just your fighting strength- to save them. Even if your people are fickle, bone-headed fools who can't see that there's more to being a ruler than brute strength and killing, do you want to see Vegita-sei fall? Do you want to see your people wiped out and this beautiful world burned?"

"No!" He said harshly. "I do not want that! I _will not_ allow it!"

"The do your duty by them as their Prince and get up tomorrow as though nothing were wrong," she said. "Keep working on the rad shield project, keep training with Rikkuum and Bardock's people, keep looking for Jeiyce's base, and keep trying to break the conditioning triggers he left in your head. Scopa and I have treated hundreds of Mousrom's victims, people he released after he broke them and found they knew nothing. I can tell you where to start." She thrust a deactivated vidpic into his hand. "It's Jeiyce of Maiyosh's image, taken at his wedding on Corsaris eight years ago. It's the only picture I could find of him. The prime factor in breaking through any wall of conditioning is to shatter the personal control of the one who did this to you. We can start slow. By looking at his picture. Ready?"

He nodded grimly. She switched on the vidpic…and he uttered a soft sob, his insides churning with sickened shame, as he turned away from that smiling face, his limbs and spine contracting into a defensive ball. "Try again," she said softly. He growled defiantly, and forced himself to turn back, forced himself to look. His hands flexed on the device, smashing it to bits, as he gasped for air as though he had just fought a battle to the limit of his strength.

"Ten seconds," Bulma said gently, lifting his head into her lap, stroking his sweat-covered face. "That's a very good start. And squashing his picture is an even better sign. Say his name."

He did not speak, his throat constricting at the mere though. "Bulma…" He rasped faintly.

"Say his name," she said again. "Don't let him keep that power over you. Take it back, Vegita. Who is your enemy?"

"Jeiyce!" He spat the word out. "Jeiyce of Maiyosh! The Red Prince! The-" He broke off, staring at her in amazement. Not once since they had carried his limp body from that black, sunless cell had he spoken the man's name without stumbling over the word, without some deep, integral part of him quailing. She leaned down and kissed him, slow and deep, one hand slipping around his waist to gently stroke his tail until he reached up with a low growl and pulled her down, drawing his mouth down the bare line of her throat. "What was that for?" He asked breathlessly.

"Positive reinforcement," she said with a tiny, wicked smile. "You have to do this as often as you can. Look at him, say his name again and again. And keep trying to kill the leaf slugs in my garden."

"You knew," he whispered.

"I knew," she replied softly. "One step at a time, Vegita." Her hand tightened on his tail and her sly smile widened marginally as he growled again.

It had been agony…agony….lying beside her each night, holding her, and not…not… "Bulma…" He husked against her collarbone, his mouth seeking lower to the swell of her breasts, nuzzling the hardened nipple through her blouse. "Gods, I want you…"

Her own breath was becoming labored. He could hear her heart pounding inside the frail cage of her chest, feel her body's heat rising in pace with his desire.

"I'm right here," she gasped. Her eyes were closed, her body pressed against his was trembling with want. He could feel, smell, the heat of her desire for him. He raised his head to brush her mouth with his, meeting her eyes-and all the fire raging inside him died in a heartbeat at the sight of the haunted swirl of desperate desire and self-loathing blazing there. He drew back from her, leaving her gasping with unfulfilled need and incomprehension.

"Don't…please don't stop," she almost sobbed.

"I cannot," he said unsteadily. "In Bardock's house, I told you that I had looked in your eyes and seen that you wanted me, but that wanting gave you grief." He reached up and stroked her beautiful porcelain face. "I cannot hold you with that look in your eyes…even if it means never having you again." He drew her back into his arms as silent tears began to course down her face. She lay her head against his chest, her whole body quivering.

"I keep thinking it wasn't supposed to be this way," she whispered. "We were supposed to meet another way, begin another way. And everything just got twisted...and now-now, it's all ruined." He wrenched his mind away from the stark, unrelenting truth he felt in those words, and pushed her hair back from her eyes, peering into her face.

"Why do you stay, Bulma? Why do you help me? I listened to you speak of what you believe, the things you think are right, when we were at Bardock's house. I hung on your every word. I know you. Why are you not working with the Red Network to destroy the Empire?" "Because of the things the Maiyosh-jin rebels have done since the war began," she said without hesitation. "Jeiyce started out on a righteous mission in my opinion. And Vegita-sei created the 'Red Prince' the day they purged Corsaris." Her eyes were distant, looking back to a past littered with countless ghosts. "Raditz led that purge, you know," she said softly. "I-I loved him. I did. But he killed all those poor people, Jeiyce's wife and baby included. And he couldn't figure out why I went cold toward him afterwards." She shook her head wonderingly. "I couldn't even think about what he'd done after-after he died. It's taken me more than three years to stop idealizing him and see him as he was, the good and the bad. But Jeiyce..." Her eyes snapped back to his, cold and clear. "He was the good guy. He was the hero fighting the uphill odds against the evil Empire."

"Woman..." Vegita said, soft and warning, feeling something that bordered on the old half-remembered rage brewing inside his chest to hear her speak of-of that man in such a way. "I said was," she went on. "What he's done with the nuke attacks, the way he's made war, has destroyed any good he could ever have achieved. The wholesale slaughter of colonies and garrison worlds, slave worlds and planets loyal to the Empire, the way he's killed the Saiyan warriors along with the civilian populations of those worlds, what he did to you and Articha...and more than all those things, that attack on Auberj-sei colony, where he and his men took out all the warriors hiding inside their invisibility shields, then-then pulled all the babies out of the colony's miniature incu-ward and had a party butchering them." Her eyes had gone flat with hate. "For all that your people have done, all the children they have murdered, they've never tortured or toyed with them. A Saiyan warrior's honor forbids giving non-combatants anything other than a quick death! Jeiyce's hands are filthy with innocent blood, and the worst thing about him is that he knows better. He wasn't raised to think people of other races aren't really people. He wasn't taught that fighting and killing are the best entertainment this side of heaven. Corsaris was a parliamentary monarchy, and his foster father raised him to respect life and freedom and-and now, he's worse than what he believes your father to be, because nothing, no rule of honor or morality, no horror of atrocity, is beyond him." She seemed out of breath from the force of the fury he saw surging behind her eyes. "As bad as I think the Empire is, the galaxy-wide chaos and in-fighting that would follow Vegita-sei's fall would kill more people than this war has. The men who began the rebellion have lost their way. They've become the thing they hated, without the stay of Saiyan honor to stop them from becoming monsters as lawless and ruthless as Bardock's histories depicted the Tsiru-jin Empire. And you...You've changed as much as Jeiyce since this war began. If Jeiyce and his men have become evil, you're becoming..."

"Good?" He prodded with a half-smirk.

"No," she said. "Not yet...but you're heading there." She kissed him. "Vegita-sei's been my home for eight years now. It's like you. Beautiful and horrible in its great goods and great evils. I love it as much as I hate it...so, I'll fight to save it."

To his shame, he had to fight a constant battle to not succumb to fresh bouts of self-pity in the weeks that followed. He could do nothing to silence the mutterings and silent contempt that dogged his footsteps wherever he went, but he put a violent, abrupt end to open mockery instantly. The first day after his expulsion from his father's counsels and favor, he beat three Elites to a hammered pulp for outright insolence. As when he trained, if his intent was not to kill, he was more than capable of vanquishing any enemy. It gave all those who might think of challenging him to a death match pause. It made the wrenching loss of his father's company and faith easier to bear. He worked, he trained, he poured over Corsarian ledgers, Tsiuru-jin accounts, Maiyosh histories and records, looking for something the search of Maiyosh finances had not yielded. Each potential base from Bardock's initial search had yielded empty, long-abandoned colony settlements, or nothing at all. He shuttled Bulma from plant to plant, recalibrating each of the servo machines for the greatest potential speed, heedless of how this looked to anyone, driven by the inexorable approach of the red light in the sky, the ever-waxing moon nearing Vegita-sei in its decade-long elliptical orbit, bringing with it a dangerous loss of thought and reason. As his father had said, Vegita-sei would soon be ripe for attack.

He took guards for the manufacturing plants of Bardock and Turna's choosing, soldiers who would follow Bardock, Turna or Articha's commands, though they would turn their faces away in shame whenever Vegita was near. The mere fact that he still lived, that he had not chosen to end his life, maimed and dishonored as he was, gave most soldiers a twisting sense of personal disgrace. To see the public ideal of Saiyan pride and strength cast down, reduced to nothing more than an orchestrator for the production of defensive mechanical weapons, too cowardly in their eyes to even die, was a crippling blow to their morale. He bore it all, the stares and the shunning alike, though there were days when his gut was knotted in frustration and rage that he could not even eat. He rested little and slept less, counting off the tic of days until Moontime, as his body grew stronger, his reflexes and strength rising higher each day in step with the soaring, titanic swell of his Ki. It was...gods, he had never imagined he cold grow so strong. And still, he could not kill. He sat in Bulma's garden each night before sleep, killing the leaf slugs his woman worked so diligently to keep from her flowers, spoke the name of his enemy, blasted his vidpic and holo-pic a thousand times. But each foray into slug slaying left him weak and gasping for breath, fighting to keep his windpipe from contracting.

"I stomp 'em," Romayn told him conversationally one evening, as the boy rooted in the soil with a tiny spade a few feet from where Vegita sat, planting what appeared to be a dead dryweed beside one of Bulma's rose bushes.

"Do not track their guts inside," Vegita muttered irritably. Even a brat of less than two years could kill these squelching things...and he could not. He raised his hand, a dot of power beading on the tip of one finger, pointing at a hand-sized invertebrate that was diligently making its way toward the stone bed of deep purple pansies. He released it, searing the slug to ashes, doubling over on the bench beneath him, nearly sobbing with relief when the spell passed, and he could breathe again.

"Edeeta?"  
"You," Vegita sat up straight again, willing his body to relax, willing the shaking to stop. He eyed the boy almost accusingly. "You speak all the words in your vocabulary without impediment. Except my name. Ou-ji-sa-ma." He took another deep, steadying breath. "Try that."

"Ou-dee-tah-ma."

Vegita considered thoughtfully. "I think I prefer 'Edeeta.' You have until the end of the summer to say it correctly. Then I will feed you to the dogs."

Something that sounded suspiciously like a giggle came from the boy's direction. "I wanna go boom too."

He gazed at Romayn narrowly, pondering the sort of question Bardock had avoided like a contagion in the last weeks. "Do you not remember how?" _From 'before...when you were a big boy?_ He thought, with a flicker of superstitious unease.

"I forgot," Romayn said. "The Ojjiisan said it's bad for babies. I'm a baby."

The 'Ojjiisan', whoever or whatever He was, had been wise to take the knowledge of how to harness Ki away from the hands of a newborn, Vegita mused. He could feel his curiosity to know more of what the child remembered of his last life and of-of being dead beginning to whither under the boy's matter-of-fact gaze. Whatever he asked, he sensed, the boy would very probably answer to the best of his ability. His mind instinctively wanted to veer away from the sense of philosophical vertigo that looking things in the eye which should be hidden from the living awoke in him. _I will ask...I will. When he is older..._

"Do you wish to learn?" He asked after a moment's thought.

"Yes!" The boy leapt up and bounded over to where he sat.

"It is much the same as when you fly," Vegita began.

"Can't fly," Romayn said sadly.

"You hover over the ground and propel yourself where you will. Flying is the same thing, only higher."

"Oh."

"The same energy you use when you fly is the energy a soldier uses when he fires a Ki blast. You-" He had taken the boy's small hands and framed them in a cupping pose before his chest. Something was hauntingly familiar here, though it felt inverted. He latched onto the memory a moment later.

_Great ham-fisted hands, so incongruously gentle, taking his tiny hands, molding them into half-moon shapes a few centimeters apart. Nappa's deep voice speaking slowly. "Push your energy into the space between your palms, Ouji-sama. Make a ball of it, then throw it with all your might."_

"Push the energy into the space between your hands," Vegita repeated the words softly. The small face scrunched up in furious effort, and slowly, a tiny dot of incandescent power began to form.

Vegita suppressed an apprehensive frown. It had taken him several attempts over several long, strenuous hours, to do this the first time, and Romayn had just-just done it. _Savior of the universe... _"Now that you have it in your hands," Vegita said. "It is yours to command. Throw it." He glanced down to see a slug making its slow, plodding way across the courtyard. It had almost reached one of the rose bushes. "Our enemy has almost reached his goal. Stop him!" It was a good throw. The leaf slug burst apart into burning bits as the minuscule volley struck it-as did the rose bush beside it.

"Oh no," Romayn said in mild horror.

"Great goddess," said a soft voice behind them. Vegita had been so intent in the lesson, he had not heard Scopa's flyer set down on the grassy flats behind the garden. "Did Rom-kun do that?" "Momma'll be mad," the boy said mournfully, staring at the ashen bits of pink petals settling around them. As though he had conjured her by her name, Bulma emerged from the house and uttered a soft gasp as her eyes fell on the murdered bush.

"My aim was off a bit," Vegita told her unrepentantly when she looked at him questioningly. "Do not glare at me, woman. The root is salvageable."

She eyed them both suspiciously for a second, then turned and stomped back into the house with only a, "Bedtime, Rom-kun!" as a reply. She had not even noticed the doctor's presence. "You fibbed to Momma," Romayn said. The boy seemed caught somewhere between horror and admiration.

"Go to bed, boy," Vegita told him sternly. He nearly jumped when two small arms wrapped themselves around his leg, tightening for half a second, before the boy darted inside. _A warrior and a prince does not embrace anyone other than his mate, and only in private, Ouji-sama..._ Nappa's gruff voice chastising him for just such a gesture toward his sensei when he was younger even than Romayn.

"I wonder which is stronger in your people," Scopa said, voicing Vegita's own thoughts. "Nature or nurture."

"I would not use that boy as an indicative test case," Vegita said shortly. "What is your errand, Doctor?" "Mousrom has gained your father's leave," Scopa said bleakly, "to set up a specialized inquisition unit in Med Center for his own personal use in questioning high level Red Network operatives." Vegita was silent, his face a cold mask that veiled the sickened fury churning inside. "How did you come by this knowledge, doctor?"

"Mousrom's clean sweep of all my informants in Kharda City was not as clean as he thinks," Scopa said quietly. "And my friends have made it clear to me that even should they suffer the same fate as the others, it is better than the daily torture of aiding Mousrom's Inquisition. And even if they die, they know their families will be freed, Ouji-sama. Many people would gladly give up their lives to see their children grow up free."

"When does he plan to begin?" Vegita growled.

"At dawn tomorrow."

Vegita smiled grimly. "Clear your folk from the entryways. I will greet him when he arrives." "Thank you, Ouji-sama." The Madrani seemed on the point of rethinking his next words, then thrust a holo-disc into Vegita's hands decisively. "I developed this for you, my prince. It is a hardlight holographic sparring program. It will integrate with the projection software in the high gravity domes. I designed the sim opponent to look like Jeiyce of Maiyosh." He watched Vegita's perfectly inexpressive face nervously. When Vegita made no comment, he bowed briefly and turned to leave.

"I will not forget your good service to me, Doctor," Vegita said.

The Madrani smiled, and bowed again. It was an easy, boyish expression of an utterly clear conscience. The effortless smile of a good man. Vegita watched him leave in silence. He remembered sleeping easily each night, being very happy with his life and all things in his world. But it had not been a clear conscience so much as the absence thereof. No regret, no true honor or sense of duty that conflicted with his own desires. No burden of _cho-gugol_ each time he touched his woman as they lay together at night in a chaste embrace. No depth of feeling for anyone or anything. Three years ago, he had been a vicious, spoiled boy-child, even though he had been a man in years. Worthless to his people an his world, Mousrom had said. A political liability to his father. And...it had not been true happiness or peace of mind he had felt. It had been thoughtlessness. He did not wish it back, or the white hot, blinding rages that had been more than kissing cousins to the tantrums he had thrown as a babe. That ever-present child's fury at being balked in any way had followed him to war. It had burned through what should have been clear cold judgment and cost him the lives of tens of thousands of faithful soldiers. He could not go back, he had told Ottousama. Only forward, wherever that led.

He met Mousrom at dawn as the Inquisitor set down on the main cargo landing pad before Med Center, a host of hundred or more warriors at his shoulder. Behind him, tech slaves were landing three large supply ships, the gusts of hot exhaust from their engines heating up the already warm morning air.

"I told you long ago, fat man," Vegita ground out. "Med Center is not a torturer's hovel." "If my actions displease you, boy," Mousrom replied, watching Vegita's face tense at the lack of any honorific, a malicious reminder of his loss of rank. "You are more than welcome to kill us all." The soldiers behind the Inquisitor erupted in nervous snickers. A hundred men as his guard. As though that would protect Mousrom from him. Vegita smiled.

"I do not need to kill you to stop you, Torturer," Vegita said coldly, watching Mousrom's smug expression give way to consternation as Vegita failed to rise to the bait. That was the fat man's intent, of course. To whip Vegita into a fury, to manipulate him into trying to kill the Inquisitor. An action that would end in Vegita's collapse.

"I have heard men speak of the beauty of the whore you stole from Raditz, boy," Mousrom went on, his beady eyes full of calculating malice. "She is indeed a sweet piece of-" Vegita blasted forward, his mind focused and cold. He began to tear through the soldiers surrounding Mousrom as though they were paper targets, stunning and breaking bones with surgical efficiency. As he beat each soldier down, he deliberately hurled him in the general direction of the Capital's center. It was over in less than five minutes.

"Out! NOW!" Vegita roared at the techs and flight crews of the transport ships. They scampered away from their vehicles in terror, and Vegita calmly blew each ship to scrap metal. Then he turned back to Mousrom who stood quivering like a frightened pudding as Vegita advanced on him.

"I will not kill you, Mousrom," Vegita said with a nasty grin. "But I am going to hurt you very, very badly."

He took his time, breaking the bones of he man's extremities first with slow, methodic cruelty. By the time Vegita reached to man's spine and pelvis bones, the Lord Inquisitor had begun to whimper and sob, sounds the man must have heard countless times, though never from his own lips. When Mousrom finally lapsed into unconsciousness, Vegita hurled him toward the city as he had the others. He had expected to feel a great deal of pleasure as he beat the man. For some reason, he only felt nauseous. He cursed softly and leapt into the sky. The first round of rad shields were two days from completion, three weeks from shipment. Far too perilously close to Moontime. He had no more time to waste fighting his own kind.

Turna and Articha petitioned the throne officially for leave to distribute the shields among the colonies personally. No one opposed them. No one dared after the tale of Mousrom and his hundred warriors circulated. As the first of the shields neared completion, Vegita turned his mind to erecting shield upon Vegita-sei itself. The actual activation was a simple matter, especially with Bulma's growing army of bots and Bardock's folk to aid them. The logistics of space traffic control, security and guarding the generator during Moontime was another thing. The shield 'windows' that Bulma had configured to be authenticated with the specific Ki signature of officers on each ship in the fleet still needed shepherding, a living being to run traffic control. Bardock took instruction from Bulma, and in turn, took over the tutelage of a selected number of warriors in the service of Articha's barony. They were unenthusiastic, to say the least. Therein lay the problem. Any warrior who sat in the shield operations post, allowing Saiyan ships in and out of the protective net around Vegita-sei through the authentication windows would consider it a punishment. It was a job for a lowly Madrani tech slave, not a Saiyan soldier. It was also a job that could not be trusted to anyone other than a Saiyan.

"That's it," Bulma said softly, as they lay together the night after the shield went online at last, their stomachs pleasantly over-loaded by the celebration feast her servant bots had prepared. He had not even thought to question the wisdom or propriety of having Bardock's folk and Scopa to table. It had not occurred to him in the state of euphoric relief he was bathed in that night that having commoners and freedmen sup at his hearth was an outrageous allowance. It was odd how this fellowship of unlikely allies had broken down barriers of class, even in his own mind. He had watched in mild disbelief as Bardock and the Madrani doctor began to sing tipsily, some alien tenor descant Vegita did not know. Let the 'party' tonight bring more talk or not, Vegita thought with a mental shrug. He could not be more disgraced than he already was. And let the moon come. There would be no attack during this season of the moon, and no more colonies lost to bombing strikes. Turna and Articha would leave with carrier full of the shield to distribute them among all Saiyan worlds at dawn tomorrow. But there was still much to do.

"There are still the smaller shields to be fitted on the carriers," he said.

"Yes," she agreed. "But that's it for the war. You'll eventually find Jeiyce and his Red Demons, but…for everybody else, that's it. Vegita-sei can't see or detect the rebel worlds in hiding because of their invisibility technology, and they can't touch you now because of the shields. Stalemate. No one else has to die."

He was silent, thinking of the mass purges that would follow in the wake of a Saiyan victory, the eradication of every world that had so much as smiled on the Maiyosh-jin, of every race with even one son or daughter fighting for the rebels. She was right about the rebel supporters at least.

He did not need to tell her he would have ordered it done. It was simple pragmatism, to prevent enemies from rising again at some later date. But Vegita-sei could not destroy what it could not find. And there was no loss of face in this scenario.

"It is not over until Jeiyce is slain," he murmured against the soft perfume of her hair. "We have a little less than nine weeks until Moontime. I would rest easier if he were run to ground before then."

"This will be my first Moon," she said. "Have you ever heard how Articha and Turna got together?"

"Only that they are bonded by the moon," he said. It was uncommon enough to take note of, but he had never been told the particulars. Every Saiyan who remained on the homeworld for the coming of the moon would be given a cerebral neuro-trank to prevent the high level of empathic openness moon madness triggered in their kind. And thus, as all the females went into moonstruck heat, they and the strongest men who won their attentions for the night would only couple inside the rage of moon madness. But they would not bond.

"Have you ever been with a woman under the moon?" She asked curiously.

He smirked. "I always preferred to fight. This will be my first moon as a man grown. I was only seventeen last time. Tell me Turna and Articha's tale."

She smiled. "He is back country nobility, and only moderately high powered. She was super Elite of heir to an ancient, powerful barony. But she told me they wanted each other from the first moment they met. The problem was, if he initiated a courtship spar, her honor would have demanded that she couldn't throw the fight. And she's about twice as strong as him, and would have just pounded him flat. So, they refused their neuro-suppresants at moontime and they went to the bad lands in the north where no one lives-and bonded under the full moon." She sighed so dreamily, he chuckled.

"It is not the sweet encounter you imagine," he said. "Moonbonding is very, very violent. The two 'lovers' nearly tear each other to pieces as they couple."

"But Articha said it's as though he were inside her mind and soul," Bulma went on. "The other half of her heart."

Vegita snorted. "And if one of them is slain, the other will pine and die within a day-if the shock of the loss itself does not stop their heart. It is not 'romantic' to draw your partner down into death with you. If I should die, I want you to live long and happily, woman! Not die with me as Turna would have died had Articha been killed by the Maiyosh-jin."

A small wondering smile touched her lips, though she did not reply.

He rose that morning and flew north and east to begin over-seeing refitting the largest of the factories for the construction of shield adapters for the fleet for the first half of the day.

"Terrorism is a real threat," Bardock muttered grimly, as they stood in the air watching the ships come and go through the authentication windows over the Capital. They circled in a wide wheel around the city, hovering above the main shield generator that lay bunkered beyond the western rim of the Capital where the spaceport looked out upon the Western Sea a few miles outside the gates.

Vegita nodded, frowning in frustration. The shields were flawless as they were, but could be sabotaged as easily as any other mechanism. "It will need Saiyan hands to guard it constantly, and Saiyan hands to man it. We have enough people trained at this point to alternate the duty in shifts, so no warriors are saddled with the responsibility indefinitely. We have two main worries at this point." Vegita glanced up at the red sphere in the sky, already tinting the blue of Vegita-sei's skies to violet with its approach. "Even after all our worlds and ships are equipped with new shields, the ships may still be high jacked by rebels with invisibility shields. They may still arrive on Vegita-sei bearing a load of invisible stowaways. And the guards we set upon the generator cannot kill what they cannot see."

"Bulma's has built guards bots designed to detect movement and minute changes in air temperature, and to open fire on warm pockets," Bardock said. "No one knows this because no one has seen the shield bunker but our own. Terrorists will not be prepared for it, and even it they anticipate such a security measure, even an invisible man will stir the air around him when he moves."

"A squad of invisible warriors could do much damage," Vegita said. "Even if they cannot get directly at the shield. As for Moontime…Turna has kept my father abreast of all we have done. He has commanded that the shield windows be deactivated during full moon. No one will be allowed in or out for the three nights of full moon. We will key a lockout combination sequence known to only you, myself and my father. But that does not solve the problem of who will guard the generator when we are all out of our wits. The bots will not suffice."

They landed and toured the generator itself, pondering its strengths and weaknesses. "Scopa was telling me something last night," Bardock said. "About how he is dreading the madhouse Med Center will become soon when we cloister all the very young brats and alien women below in incu-ward. The cubs will be sedated so the low-powered medics can maintain some semblance of order. Incu-ward, Scopa said, is bunkered below ground, but in addition, it is shielded from the moon wit lunar reflectors. They are a simple construct, merely the inverse of a moon bauble. Bulma and I can fit the generator bunker with the same sort of reflectors, so the guards inside will not be affected at moonrise."

A burst of agitated Ki rippled the air to the east as they rose up again over the spaceport. The figure of a small girl was speeding toward them. Vegita recognized her as Bardock's youngest squad sister, Anyan.

"Ouji-sama! Bardock-san! We've found him!"

Bardock leveled an indulgent grin at the small soldier. "Who have you found, brat? The Red Prince himself?"

"Yes!" The girl gasped out. She stared at the openly smirking faces of both men and opened her mouth to curse them both like lazing dock hands, before she remembered one of them was royalty. "We were baby-sitting the bots at factory 3 when Toussan received an encoded hyper light transmission from Lord Turna about the war in the colonies-The Red Demons struck Payah Colony today, an hour after Lord Turna erected the shield there. The plasma nuke capsules popped and just died in the air!"

Vegita felt a huge fierce grin spread across his face. It had worked! It had all worked perfectly! And just in time for Payah.

"The enemy was cloaked," the girl went on, "But the colony governor general sent out ships through the shield window, against Lord Turna's advice. They fired wide scatter bursts in every direction and blew one Maiyosh-jin ship out of the sky with a lucky shot, and crippled another. The ships were cloaked, but the debris they shed when you wing one wasn't, so our ships stalked the second ship for a while. They caught a mayday signal from an encrypted code we broke only a week ago. Lord Turna said the exact words were this: 'Dead White Command! Dead White Command! Do not approach, my Prince! The monkeys have a new defense weapon!' Their engine core blew before they could be taken prisoners, Ouji-sama, but Lord Turna says we managed to jam their transmission." The girl grinned breathlessly. "The King will order every world in the direct line of that transmission, from Paysah to the edge of the galaxy purged. Now, it is only a matter of time until we find the Red Prince's hide-away!"

"No!" Vegita said, frowning. "He will get wind of it if we purge in a straight line toward him. He will be long gone before we reach his base!" Vegita swore softly. To be so close and know that the bastard would elude the Empire once again! But…no. His father would not act so rashly. He would think the matter through first. And this would buy Vegita some time to find Jeiyce's base world on his own!

Bardock had gone suddenly pale with shock. He turned blazing eyes to Vegita's. "My Prince…we must go back to your villa! I think…I am afraid I will jinx what I suspect by speaking until I know!"

They set down moments later at the villa and Bardock nearly tore through the house to the library. He pulled up a holo starchart from the desk computer and did a furious calculation. "Give me the co-ordinates of the transmission, girl!"

Anyan recited the numbers with studied care, reading the off the hyper wave print out in her hand. Bardock laid another set of co-ordinates into the equation, and stared down at the nearly instantaneous result on the screen.

"We have him, Ouji-sama," he said softly. "I knew it. 'Dead White Command.' There are seventy-nine systems in a direct line of transmission between Paysah and Jeiyce's base." He glanced up, his eyes shining. "Tsiru-sei, my Prince. A dead, white world of snow and ice, where no one would look or even venture because of the quarantine."

"Dead White Command," Vegita repeated with a soft snarl.

A shrill alarm sounded, high and angry, from the comlink on Bardock's wrist. The man glanced down in annoyance, then his face tensed. He rose to his feet, clattering the chair to the floor behind him. "It's Bulma's personal emergency page," he said sharply. "There must be trouble at Med Center."

"That persistent, fat fuck!" Vegita spat. "He must be very enamored of injury to try setting up shop in Med Center again so soon!"

They did not find Mousrom at Med Center. The main entrance facing the landing pad was a cluster of frightened-looking medics, several of whom turned and ran at the sight of Vegita's angry face. Bulma was not among them. One man, a tall, green-skinned fellow with the build of a warrior, a young man Vegita remembered as having been one of Scopa's surgical staff physicians, stepped forward. His face was bleak.

"I sent the message, Ouji-sama," he said urgently. "We-we did not realize what had happened until a few minutes ago, my Prince! Please believe that!"

Vegita began to grow cold all over. "Where is Bulma?"

"She took an early lunch with Scopa and her son in the garden conservatory," the surgeon said. "The gardens are open to the sun so the-the flowers there will grow. They-they must have taken her then."

"Taken?!" He grabbed the man and shook him. Vegita felt his breath begin to seize in his chest.

"She is nowhere in Med Center, Ouji-sama," the other man said. "Neither she nor Scopa nor the boy. They have not been seen for more than five hours!"

A hard hand clamped on Vegita's shoulder, bringing the world back into sharp focus. "Kharda City," Bardock hissed. "Mousrom will have taken them there!"

The flight north was the most frenzied, lightning fast trip of his life. He flew hounded by a thousand horror-struck visions of what Mousrom might have done to her in five hours of having Bulma in his hands. It took less than a quarter of an hour before the mesa of the stark mountain fortress city loomed into view. They fell upon it like angels of destruction.

Bardock's feet had not touched the ground before he began to kill. He tore through the first round of guards, howling curses like a mad thing. Vegita simply waded through them, locked inside a cold, deathly calm rage the likes of which he had never known. He blasted everything, living and inanimate, from his path, burning his way to the Inquisitor's cells. A face loomed up before him, one he knew he should recognize. Urima, one of Mousrom's chief lackey's.

He reached out, deaf to the meaningless words the man was saying, and shook him like a fish in a sea shrike's mouth. "Where is she?"

"I-I cannot-"

Vegita tore the man's right arm from its socket at the shoulder. "Where?!" He roared over Urima's screams.

"In-in the n-new special su-su-suspects facility…the old…old courtesans' wing…royal palace…"

Vegita hurled him away like a stone and launched himself into the air, burning the air around him, without a glance back. He felt rather than saw Bardock lob a monolithic blast at the city as he rose into the sky on Vegita's heels, his face black with fury. Kharda City vanished in a fiery mushroom cloud of black rock and dust.

Half an hour to Kharda and back! Another half hour for Mousrom to hurt her, rend her, mutilate her! Vegita shrieked and threw every ounce of strength he possessed into his forward movement, feeling a tidal rush of new power roll in with each nightmare image that flashed before his mind's eye.

A swirling, rising vortex of terrified, sobbing horror laced inside a strangely familiar Ki struck him like a blow as he reached the eaves of the Capital.

_MommaMommaMomma!_

Romayn's Ki soared upward like a fuel-doused fire, shrieking inside a hurricane of newborn rage. A great section of the Palace antechambers blew apart in a hailstorm of fiery debris. An instant later, Vegita struck ground zero of the blast like a falling star, honing in on the weeping child's voice, still resonating in his mind through the boy's Ki.

_Momma…poor Momma…_

He tore through chunks of rubble, his heart frozen in his chest. There was no name for the kind of fear he was drowning in, for his terror of what he might find. He lifted a solid section of smoldering ceiling stone…and he saw them. Bleeding, battered and covered in ash and mortar, Bulma was huddled beneath the stone slab holding Romayn in a death grip.

"Edeeta…" Romayn whimpered.

"Vegita?" She didn't sob hysterically as the boy was doing. She lay limp and docile in his arms as he lifted her, cradling her against his chest. She was alive alive alive! He could not speak. He seemed powerless to do anything but hold her.

"Soft, lunatic weakling," said a hoarse cackle. Mousrom had clawed his way out of a pile of burning masonry. All around them, the rubble was shifting as the Inquisition guards began to do the same. "Weeping like a mewling newborn. The Saiyan no Ouji and his little 'family'!" Mousrom spat out the word.

Vegita suddenly noticed Bardock standing at his right shoulder, growling like a leashed dire cat. "All of them except Mousrom," Vegita told him.

"Thank you, my Prince!" Bardock uttered a low snarl and fell upon Mousrom's men like an avalanche.

"I am within my rights!" Mousrom shouted, flinching back as Bardock began killing the men around him. Vegita sat Bulma down very carefully. He began walking toward Mousrom slowly. "The-the orders for the arrests were signed by your father!"

"You lie!" Vegita hissed, still advancing, still ice cold and calm. He had come to a place so far beyond rage it was almost serene. The Inquisitor saw it too. Just as he saw his death in Vegita's eyes.

"The Madrani had a liaison with an-an exposed Red Network operative!" Mousrom babbled. "Your own former serving wenches gave up the name of Zarbon of Rashia-sei under questioning. They had been leaking information from your own home to the Red Network for four years! It-it-it is only logical to infer your entire household was Red Network, and the doctor their go-between! The whore had to have been involv-"

Vegita smashed his fist through the Inquisitor's forehead, shattering his skull and all that lay housed within. Mousrom fell backwards slowly. Dead as a post.

Vegita did not even watch to see the corpse strike the ground. He turned back to Bulma, burning the gore off his hand with a tiny burst of Ki. He knelt again, taking her back in his arms. He pulled her fine-boned hands up, catching a flicker of red. He uttered a sobbing snarl when he saw why. They had torn out her fingernails.

"Bulma…" He managed to say.

"They killed Scopa," she sighed sadly, her voice remote and soft. "They really thought he knew something about Zarbon. But he didn't. He didn't spy for Zarbon. He just loved him. He had no idea-" She shook her head as though it would erase the events of the last few hours from her memory. "After…I don't know how long, Mousrom decided he really didn't know anything. And he just-just killed him. He broke Scopa's neck. Then-then they started on me…my fingers…" Her eyes were huge and unblinking, glassy with reactive shock.

Bardock was beside him, peering intently at Romayn, trying to ascertain if his son was injured-though he was not so foolish as to try and take the child from her.

"I kept cursing and yelling and screaming at him," she said softly. "He watched me for a while, then he shook his head and told me my threshold of pain was far too high for such a pretty girl. So, he decided to try something else. They had taken Rom-kun away from me and locked him in another room. Mousrom told me I could confess or watch them cut my baby into pieces…"

"Bulma…" Vegita said hoarsely. "Do not try to tell this tale now."

"When they brought Rom-kun in, he saw what they'd done to my-my fingers, and he blew the building apart." She was speaking with a frighteningly disconnected smile. "My baby loves my so much…"

"Ouji-sama," a deep, strangely gentle voice. The green-skinned doctor from Med Center. Nail? Was that his name? Vegita didn't question where all the other people surrounding them had suddenly come from. "I should sedate her."

Vegita kissed her brow and nodded to the man in answer. "Do so. Bardock!" The man looked like a demon out of legend, covered in blood, still smoldering with rage. "Carry them back to Med Center. They are to be under guard at all times. I will be there shortly. I must speak with my father."

The icy, still-watered killing rage had not left him when he found his father taking his evening meal alone in the smallest of his audience chambers, an oddly homey room Vegita and the King had often dined in. He entered to room and said no word as he took a seat opposite the older man.

Ottousama broke the frost-bitten silence. "You have something to discuss, boy?"

"Why?" Vegita whispered.

"You are reinstated with full rank and honor as prince and heir to the Empire," his father said.

"I asked you a question, old man," Vegita said with deadly gentleness.

"You killed Mousrom, did you not?" Ottousama asked with a grim smile. "Did you hesitate or react adversely at all?"

Vegita was silent.

"I think you have your answer, boy," his father said. "Now, go see to your concubine before you make yourself king before this war is won."

Vegita rose and left quickly…before he did just that.

Before the sky had completely given way to night, the medic Nail released Bulma from his care. They had treated her hands with regen bandage swaths and sedated her heavily for the shock. Bardock bent over the bed as Vegita laid her down and pried his son from her sleeping arms. She would not release Romayn while the medics were treating her, had held onto him even after she was unconscious.

"Momma?" Romayn said softly, starting awake.

"She is well, boy," Bardock said. "We must let her sleep now. Would you like to sleep in the hearthroom with Anyan and Kyouka and the dogs?" The entire squad was camped out in the villa in a subdued vigil.

"Okay," Romayn said uncertainly. He heaved a tired, sad little sigh. "Scopa died…"

"Yes, he did," Bardock said grimly. "Very bravely. We will mourn him tomorrow." His son nodded silently and fell back into sleep with one last tiny sob of grief.

"There is a communication from the palace," Bardock muttered. "The details of the arrests."

"Destroy it," Vegita said. He tore his eyes away from the still face of the woman on the bed, and moved to the desktop comp, staring down at the scan of Tsiru-sei's planetary specs and orbital calendar. _Fool!_ He thought. _To have chosen such a world as his base._

It was now, tonight, or never. Tomorrow would be too late. Even now, twelve hours after the intercepted hyper light message, there was no guarantee the Red Prince would still be there.

"The medic said she will not wake for more than twenty hours," Vegita murmured distractedly. _The prototype of the scouter skiff is at the factory. It is the only one fitted with a rad shield at present…_ "Guard her well, you and your soldiers, until I return. There is a matter I must attend to."

"We are still at war, Ouji-sama," Bardock said softly. Gods, the man was quick. But Vegita only smiled, a mirthless twist of his lips, at the man's veiled caution against doing anything irrevocable to his father in a fit of rage while the Empire was still in a state of emergency.

"I have no immediate aspirations to the throne," Vegita told him. "Guard her with your life." He left without another word, before the frighteningly perceptive bastard worked out what he was actually planning.

The brilliant audacity of setting up camp less than five hours flight time from Vegita-sei only full impressed itself on him as he dipped the skiff into a high orbit around the pearl white orb of Tsiru-sei. The first shock wave rocked the small craft, rippling over the shields as the sensor net detected his skiff and began firing round after round of plasma grenades. Apparently such a small ship wasn't worth a missile.

He gunned the ship downward just as they hit him with a second barrage. For all the effect it had, he might had merely hit a pocket a nasty chop in his descent. He could almost smell the fear, blooming into full blown panic below as it became quickly apparent the attacks had done no damage at all. He set the ship on autopilot, programmed to circle the general region above the center of concentrated fire, and keyed the shield window to his own energy signal with a small rush of Ki into the authentication sensor. He opened the hatch below the small ship's belly, a burst of icy night air lashing his face. He took a deep breath. _Now or never... _He would not get another chance.

He stepped out of the skiff, the shield window tingling his skin as he passed through it. And he fell upon them out of the night sky like the wrath of the gods, a roaring mountain of power and rage, killing everything within the reach of his hands. Above the carnage, Tsiru-sei's three moons glowed brilliant and full, illuminating the night sky as bright as a storm-tossed morning.

"Jeeeeeeiyce!" Vegita howled, slamming one gigantic fist through the icicle-shaped spires and turrets of the beautiful White City around him. "Jeiyce! Come out and face meeee! I will let the others escape while we fight! Come out, Prince of Maiyosh-sei!" He felt the stings of their Ki-killers here and there, though he was moving too fast for them to tag him with more than a glancing blast. _They will have to construct of bigger gun_, he thought, chuckling through fanged teeth. His strength...his strength was so great now, that even the Ki fracturing weaponry would not bring him down-though he knew he would be too weakened to do what he meant to do if he shifted back to man form. But none of this mattered. The Oozaru change had no tie to a warrior's Ki. It was born of the body, of the inherent were-nature of his kind. He flickered here one instant, there another, too fast to let them draw a bead and take aim at his tail, burning and smashing and pulverizing everything in sight, reveling in the mad, long-lost joy of battle.

"I am here, monkey! Come and get me!"

Vegita saw him. And even lost inside the singing madness of the moons overhead, he froze, his gut suddenly full of razors, his blood running to ice in his veins. This was no vidpic or nightmare or even a sparring program. This was the smiling man who had stroked his head as though he were an obedient dog, as Vegita had kissed the tops and the Red Prince's boots. This was the hand that had taken him to the realm of madness and left in there alone, screaming in the dark like the terrified child he had become. He roared defiantly, bellowing fire at Jeiyce...but he could not, _could not_, advance, or even look at his enemy.

The Red Prince had begun to chuckle softly, darting forward and back, narrowly evading the great, swinging claws, the sound of his laughter ringing in Vegita's sensitive animal's hearing. He shot upward, knowing he appeared to be quite literally turning tail in flight, knowing in the deepest part of his heart that this was more than half truth. He burned higher and higher into the frozen air, leaving the base's defenders far behind. And Jeiyce was there on his heels in seconds. Only he had the strength to keep pace with Vegita.

"Stop!" His enemy screamed.

And Vegita felt his muscles rebel against his will, as he slowed and halted in his ascent, hanging motionless in the air, caught in the dark, hate-filled eyes of the Red Prince.

"Change back, boyo," Jeiyce said softly.

Vegita howled like a chained beast, sensing the other Maiyosh-jin closing fast. They knew that though their Prince had frozen their titanic enemy in his tracks for the moment, Jeiyce was still in terrible danger.

"Change back, Vegita!" Jeiyce repeated sternly, like a drill instructor barking out commands to a children's platoon. "Do as I say, monkey!"

Vegita changed, shrinking out of the giant, unmatchable Oozaru strength, head lowered, chest heaving with exertion, his entire body shuddering with the loss of size and sweet, ringing fury. He tipped his head back, searching for the pin point of light in the sky, praying to all the gods of wars that he found it before he buckled and collapsed beneath another of the Red Prince's commands. "Good boy." Jeiyce had closed on him, that hated, grinning face only a few feet from his own. The others were almost here, cheering their master as they came, taking aim at Vegita as they neared weapon's range. Far, far in the distance, he could hear the sound of cloaked ships screaming upward, the roar of invisible transport carriers leaping to hyper light speed. There it was! The light of his salvation, winking down at him from its wide wheeling arc on the very edge of the sky!

Vegita whipped his head down and looked his enemy directly in the eye. He aimed the palms of both hands downward and fired with all his might. The on-coming warriors vanished in the heat blast, and Vegita grinned viciously as the perpetual smile slipped and fell from the Red Prince's face. And in that one instant of unguarded shock, Vegita darted forward and seized him in a strangle hold. He rose up through the sleet-edged clouds, dragging Jeiyce with him, running before the backdraft of the blast as it struck the ground like a meteor and ignited Tsiru-sei's thin atmosphere. Vegita fired another round as he flew, a sharp debilitating spear of energy into the Maiyosh-jin's vitals. Jeiyce convulsed against him.

Then he was in the skiff, tearing like a beam of light through the man-sized window in the rad-shield, tossing Jeiyce's inert form onto the deck and slamming the ship's controls into hyper light speed. He slid down the wall of the little bridge, breathing in great exhausted gulps, as the shots he'd taken, the pain and the bloodloss he had given no thought to in battle, began to hit him. They'd hit him more times than he had realized. Was there a field trauma kit in the medic's chest?

Jeiyce lay gasping weakly several feet away in a widening pool of blood. Vegita crawled painfully over to the man's prone body and studied the Maiyosh-jin's injuries with cold expertise. He would need to bleed another few minutes…

"Congrats, laddie," Jeiyce croaked. "I would have bet all the lost wealth of Maiyosh House that you'd be weaving baskets permanently after we finished with you."

"You were a fool not the kill me," Vegita said coldly.

"Damn, you've gotten strong…" A soft chuckle. "Did I do that to you?"

Vegita only stared back. He had sunk back into that cold still place that words like 'hate' and 'rage' were insufficient to describe.

"So," murmured his enemy, "You didn't kill me. Planning a little payback, are we? Got the wrack and hooks all ready for me?"

"Saiyan warriors," Vegita rasped. "Kill their enemies cleanly, Maiyosh-jin."

Jeiyce snickered. "Like Mousrom and his Inquisition?"

"Mousrom was not a warrior, or even a true Saiyan!" Vegita snarled. "And now he is a corpse!"

"So I hear." Jeiyce eyed him closely, his eyes growing serious and hard. "Well, well…I guess it's true that if you beat him long enough, even the stubbornest monkey will learn a lesson or two. You're different, laddie. No belligerence, no tantrums, no bullshit or bluster. No pleasure in causing pain. Less the princelet and more the king to be…Too bad you'll never wear the crown."

"What the hell do you mean?!" Vegita hissed, gritting his teeth against the numb weakness beginning to pull at his limbs.

"Oh nothing…just that you're still going to lose this war. You think my people are going to turn up their toes and die when you've killed me?" Jeiyce cackled weakly. "I'll be a martyr, a tragic hero, whether you kill me in combat or gut me like a heard beast in some public execution. They'll fight on without me." He sighed deeply, his dark eyes filling with bleak relief. "I'm ready to die. Been ready for five years. Ever since your soldiers destroyed my…my everything when they took Corsaris. I…gods, I hope Jula can't see me from Heaven…the things I've done, what I've become."

Vegita shook his head against the lightheadedness and the pain, remembering Bulma's words about Jeiyce. "You became the thing you fought."

Jeiyce blinked at him in surprise. He was silent for so long, Vegita begin to think the man had passed out. "No death by torture…" he said finally. "That's a bit of good news."

"No torture," Vegita said coldly. "I will simply kill you and call us even."

Jeiyce's expression was unreadable. "My good friend Zarbon nearly got himself nicked by Mousrom yesterday, I hear. The fat fool arrested everybody around him and let the one real Red Network spy slip away. You won't find him either. He's a slippery fellow." His breath was growing steadily more labored and shallow. "Zar-Zarbon tells me you've got a little foster son-two years old, right? A gift to your lady love to replace her real son. The one you murdered." He ignored Vegita's low growl of anger. "Zarbon also says you dote on the girl, your pretty Bulma of Chikyuu, as though she were your moonbride. That Mousrom has used reports of your open affection for the woman and the boy to discredit your sanity in Council. It's nice to have a family, isn't it?" Jeiyce didn't seem to notice the dangerous rise in Vegita's Ki. The mere thought of Jeiyce speaking Bulma's name, of how horrifyingly close his agents had been to her and the boy all this time, jolted Vegita's flailing consciousness. The Maiyosh-jin's eyes were like dead windows, looking in on a hell of grief and hate. "You want to kill me and call us even, you Saiyan fuck?! You think you're being gracious? When your pretty lady is dragged out of Med Center by her hair and raped to death by your enemies, then we'll be even! When your foster son is taken by his feet and his brains dashed out against a wall, when your father is cut down and torn apart by my warriors, and the world you love is burned to a spinning ball of slag around Vegita-sei's sun-then I will call us even! Not before!" Jeiyce heaved a wet, shallow sob of fury, his eyes fluttering as consciousness began to desert him. "Not before…"

Vegita leaned forward unsteadily and lay his hand on the Maiyosh-jin's belly wound, sealing the blood flow with a gentle pulse of heat. He'd had to wait until the Red Prince lost enough blood and grew too weak to move or wake during the five hour trip back to Vegita-sei. The energy for that simple task took all he had. Vegita slumped forward onto the deck beside Jeiyce and slept.

The alarm cut through the shallow sleep laced with pain and fatigue. Vegita clambered slowly to his feet, tottering over to the nav computer and keying in his authentication code, waiting a long, impatient minute for traffic control to open a window for the skiff. He grinned faintly, laying in a distinct set of landing coordinates, before sinking down into the pilot's chair as he watched the moon's red rays filtering through the clouds as he descended through them. He had sunk into a light doze by the time the soft jolt of the ship touching down jostled him awake. He stood slowly, straightening his back, and made his way carefully to where Jeiyce lay, still unconscious. He gripped the Maiyosh-jin by the collar of his armor, and drug him along the ground as he hit the hatch control and strode down the ramp into bright morning sunshine. The ring of guards stood down, and the wave of murmuring wonder rippling through the throng of warriors gathered around the rim of the roof of the royal palace's Council Chamber.

A figure stepped forward, his black opal eyes shining with pride and joy. "What gift have you brought me, Prince of Vegita-sei?" His father asked in a loud voice.

"The first of our enemies, Ottousama," Vegita responded in kind. "Jeiyce of Maiyosh, the Red Prince of Corsaris! I have defeated him, and beg your leave to give him a coward's execution two months hence, on the day of your Centennial. For you and the Empire, my father!" Vegita knelt down in the sudden silence, knowing his father alone could see the black rage still welling inside him as their eyes met, knowing Ottousama knew well that nothing was forgiven. But a small, pleased smile crooked the edge of his father's mouth nevertheless. The King lay his hand on Vegita's right shoulder, a formal blessing.

"You have done well, my son."

The cheer that rose up around them was deafening, but Vegita only heard the quiet words his father spoke, for his ears alone. "Rest this night, boy. Come to me tomorrow and we will reach an understanding."

He arrived at the villa and commanded the warriors he had left standing watch over Bulma's sleep to leave in a quiet voice that silenced their joyous praise. He rejected Bardock's offer the send for a physician to tend his wounds. The older man left with only a solemn nod, carrying his son under one arm. Vegita bathed and bandaged the host of superficial burns and gouges he had taken on Tsiru-sei in med patches, feeling the worst of the fatigue from the Ki-killer blasts beginning to fade. Jeiyce's allies would have to design stronger weapons in the future.

They would not stop fighting, as Jeiyce had said, just because their prince was slain. There was still Dodoria to hunt down, and the hidden mastertech. Whoever he was, the rebels' secret weapons smith was simply too dangerous to be allowed to live, even if he had ceased to build for the Red Demons. Though Vegita doubted the hidden engineer would ever be found alive. Jeiyce would never have let such an asset escape him or quit his ranks if the mastertech still lived.

He moved silently into the bedroom that had begun life as a study and slipped into bed beside his woman. He raised one fine-boned hand and inspected her fingers. The nails had grown back perfectly. His enemy was overthrown and captured. His disgrace reversed, his rank and title returned to him under the grace and good will of his father. His people were as safe as it was possible to keep them. And none of these things gave him as much peace and joy of mind and spirit as the woman who's frail body lay warm against his. He kissed the palm of her hand lightly and sank into sleep.

He woke to the soft sound of weeping, his arms tightening around her instinctively. He propped up on one elbow, not speaking, only holding her, as she wailed as though her heart were torn in half. Little by little, the sobs tapered down into streaming tears, then sniffles, then sad-eyed silence. And still he said nothing.

"It's my fault," she whispered. "I-I could have said something while they were-were hurting him, but I was afraid of what would happen to Rom-kun. I should have spoken up! I should have confessed to anything they wanted to save him!"

"It is not your fault," he said sharply. "It is Mousrom's fault. And he has paid with his life."

"Scopa…" She moaned the name softly. "He never hurt anyone in his life. He saved more lives than I can count. And he-he-" She sat up slowly, her eyes beginning to burn. "Everything that's good and decent always gets torn to pieces! All my life…everyone and everything I've ever loved or cared about. And I just get back up every time my life is destroyed and start building another one, when I know…" She sobbed brokenly as her voice continued to rise angrily. "When I know it'll all be blow to hell in the end! Romayn and Scopa and-and you and everyone in my life. I'm going to wake up one day and find Rom-kun's been killed in a training exercise after they take him to the children's barracks in two years. Or that you or Bardock or Kyouka or Articha has been killed in battle somewhere. Or that your father has finally ordered you to put me aside, and you pack me off world as a free woman, but-but I'll have to leave Rom-kun behind, and-"

"That will not happen," He said flatly. "Not if I live to see a thousand years. Bulma…hear me!" He rose up to sit facing her and took her slim shoulders, drawing her closer to him. "I will not tell you no one you value will die. That will happen. But my father will not command me in any way ever again."

The words hung there in the air between them, as her tear-streaked face paled slowly. "You didn't-"

"No…" He growled. "But it was a near thing."

She shook her head sadly, grief coating every syllable. "Your father told you that he would 'help you set yourself to rights.' He knew seeing us in Mousrom's hands, would break the geas in your mind. And all it cost him was your love and Scopa's life…"

"The war will soon be over," He told her, not wanting to sort through the truth of her words. He was still too angry. He breathed deeply and told her all that he had done while she slept. "I will execute him on the first night of Moontime, the day of my father's Centennial, in eight weeks time. In spite of what Jeiyce believes, the war will die with him, though not immediately. We will hunt the rebels still. Seeking them out and battling them where we can find them will keep us vigilant and in fighting trim for many years to come, but, as you have said, they will be difficult to find. And with your rad shields, they cannot strike at us." He held her eyes in his, shaking with the effort it would take to say the things he meant to say aloud. "When Jeiyce is dead, and the Empire is once more stable and strong, I will take the throne. My father-" He stopped, swallowing hard, as a sudden, vivid visualization of that day leapt to his mind, dousing the burning rage…a picture of Ottousama lying cold and dead. Dead by Vegita's own hand.

"He knows," she said softly. "He knew signing that arrest order would make it easier for you. He knows you're ready."

He nodded silently. "When I am king, I will serve my people and protect them and lead them. I will give my life for them, if need be. But I will order all things in my own household as I wish, custom and propriety be damned. I will take no queen. I will find a strong warrior to bear my son…but he will be yours to raise. You-you have proven yourself a gifted instructor of kings to be. Romayn will be his foster brother, his first lieutenant, and his body guard. As such, he will be trained in the Palace alongside my heir, and he will not go the barracks. You are free, woman. Go if you will, you and the boy. Or stay and help me rebuild my empire. It is your right, since you have helped to save it."

She kissed him, shaking in a renewed storm of weeping, though her tears seemed to be equal parts sorrow and joy mingled. She pressed closer, soft and pliant against his naked body, drawing out the kiss until his breath began to come short and his blood began to burn as it coursed through his heart.

"Make love to me," she whispered, a soft command.

"Bulma…"

"I need you," she sobbed. "I want…I want to stop hurting. I want to feel like I did that last day at Bardock's house. Happy and loved and at peace. I want you, Vegita…please…"

There was no guilt or inverted loathing in her eyes, no doubt. Not a wisp of hesitation. Oh gods…the long nights of lying beside her, barred by his own heart from anything sweeter than a child's innocent embrace… He plunged his fingers into the sapphire silk of her hair and lay her down, trembling as though he were in the grip of a heart seizure, forcing himself to touch lightly, with the same gentle caress he had used when they lay together in that flowered meadow, forcing himself to remember that the least uncontrolled flex of muscle or thrust would hurt her. He kissed her mouth again, nipping the lower lip slowly, and began to work his way down her body. Neck to breasts, tasting and suckling her nipples until she began to gasp for breath. Breasts to the flat, smooth plain of her stomach, his body suspended above hers, barely touching, as his mouth sought lower still. Stomach to kneecaps, brushing over all the lay between lightly and quickly with his tongue and lips, feeling a pleased smirk tug at his mouth as she made a low growl of protest.

"Patience, woman," he chuckled softly, kissing the inside of one silken thigh, as he rolled his mouth upward with maddening slowness. Tasting and teasing, tongue darting and flicking with delicate, sweet cruelty, he sent her tumbling over the edge without him again and again. Until she threaded her hands through the stiff, black spikes of his hair, her back arched like a taut-strung bow, and shrieked for him to take her.

He kissed his way up her body, retracing the route he had taken, eye to eye with her now, face to face. He brushed her lips again, deepening to a fevered, desperate kiss…and slowly, gently, moved inside her. And stopped, hard and still, less than an inch inside.

"Vegita…" She whimpered.

"Shhh…" He fought with all the will he possessed to keep his own voice steady, to keep his entire body from shuddering apart with desire. With the terrifying joy of what he was about to do. If she would allow it. If she gave him leave. He drew back and pushed in again, still gentle, in a searing slow agony of slow, shallow thrusts, never more than an inch deep, tilting his hips from side to side, then up, then down, lost in the endless blue of the eyes of the woman beneath him, deeper than Vegita-sei's deepest sea.

"Please…" She was gasping. "Vegita-"

"Do you want me?" He whispered against her lips.

"Yes…Yes!"

He drew in a long steady breath of air, laden with her scent, still sinking in and out of her. "You are free, Bulma…Romayn is yours to keep. This world is yours, your home." He stopped moving, raising up, his hardness withdrawn to her threshold, drenched in sweat with the effort of holding back, of banking the fire that was threatening to burn him alive. "I swore to return to you all that I took. Home and child and freedom are yours, as much as a mortal man can replace such things-everything except your mate. I will give you that if you will have me, Bulma." He kissed her again, still trying to fathom her heart through the windows of her eyes. "Will you have me?"

Her face was quiet, though her heart was hammering against his. "Do you love me?"

He opened his mouth to speak, but his jaw clenched around the words instinctively. "Bulma-"

"Do you love me?" She repeated implacably, her brilliant azure gaze hardening. "The man I loved at Bardock's house, the man you should have been, told me he loved me. I see him inside you. More than I ever imagined possible. He's not gone…he's a part of you. I see him in everything you've done since we returned, but you have to bring him out a little more. You have to say it!"

But he could not. The words would not have left his lips if his life hung upon the utterance. "I-I-" He growled in frustration. "Bulma…" There was another way. He drew her up with him, astride his lap as he rose to kneel on the bed…and sank his teeth deep into the base of her neck, pushing all that he felt gently into the doorway of her heart through the tenuous, half-wrought mental bond he had just initiated. She felt the brush of his mind against hers, recognized it for what it was, and all that he was offering, the entirety of his self. She opened like a morning flower at daybreak, and let him in. And all that she felt for him poured back through the link, the whole measure of her heart, even as he gave her all that he was.

She flowed into him, black boiling hatred entwined with selfless, soul-deep love, pain and degradation and horror hand in hand with a sighing girl-child's heart that leapt for joy at the mere sight of his face, at the thought of his touch. It was all inextricably intermingled, heart-breaking love and lightless, remorseless hatred. And he had earned every ounce of both. He began sobbing softly as she swept through him, as he saw the world repainted through her eyes, the monster he had been, the man he was now. Everything…except…There was one place he could not reach, standing in her mind like a locked and bolted door, encircled in a gray, horrible cloud of guilt and shame and regret. Perhaps it was the one piece of herself she would always keep separate.

Ages of shame, an eternity of sorrow and regret, would not erase the deeds he had done. But the miracle that shook him apart with soaring joy was that she loved him at all. That her love was in equal portion to the hate he so richly deserved. That the depth and breadth of her heart could reach across the chasm he had dug between them, across the hate for the man-the spoiled, fool boy-he had been, who she thought of as an enemy, dead and unmourned.

"Say it, Vegita," she said again, her voice breaking under the weight of all he felt for her, that she was the measure and definition of love to him, his instructor in all its unwritten laws, his first realization that the word was not a feeling, but the deeds of a lifetime.

"I love you!" He choked, nearly weeping like a child again as the joy inside her surged into him, over-flowing the well of her soul.

_I love you, Vegita…you are the Vegita I loved! You are!_

He cried out as she enveloped him completely, as she sank down over him, taking him deep inside, her mouth against his, her blue eyes full of tears. He rose into the air above the bed, moving with her in a steady slow rhythm, as a ripple of her delight at being airborne flowed into him. Faster and harder, he let her set the pace in slow increments. His thrusts deepened as she urged him on without words, tangled in the strands of her thoughts, spiraling upward with her to an unscalable summit, higher and higher, on a wave of love and hate and desire and need that seemed to sweep away his mind as the crest broke inside them at the same instant, leaving him as forgetful of past and duty and debts owed as the man who had held her in that flower-strewn field.

The words left his lips without hesitation this time, as they clung together, drifting back down on the bed to lie side by side, wrapped around each other in a damp tangle. "I loved you, Bulma," he breathed raggedly. "Oh gods, I love you…"

"I can feel you," she whispered, her voice trembling. "…still inside me…everywhere."

"We went so deep because of the moon," he said softly, his own voice unsteady. "It will be dangerous soon, for us to share the same bed…"

She kissed him, soft and lingering. "But not yet."

"Not yet," he agreed. "Sleep now…tomorrow will be a better day."

Bardock's sharp eyes noticed Bulma's high-necked collar the next morning, but no one else seemed to take any note of it. It occurred to him too late, as they bathed and dressed, that he had been a moon mad fool to put his mark on her visibly. Taking an alien to mate was taboo, even for a common soldier. For a crown prince-it was a death sentence for her if they were discovered, at least until he sat uncontested on the throne. But she would be working at Med Center, with Bardock hovering near at all times, until Moontime was past. Cloistering the few alien women still left on Vegita-sei after the mass rotation of all slave labor off world under Mousrom's 'reign', keeping them safe from a world full of Saiyan males in rut. Securing the youngest Saiyan brats below as well, none of whom would survive the festival. Administering the time release cerebral neuro-trank injections to every single Saiyan past adolescence on the planet, to prevent accidental moonbonding. It was a very real danger, even two to three weeks before Moontime.

"Do you wish to…stay home today?" He watched her face closely, watched her think it over.

"No," she said after a moment. "I need to keep busy. It's the best kind of therapy for me. And they'll need me with the moon coming and-and Scopa gone…" A silent tear slid down her face and she wiped it away angrily. "Are we…are we moonbonded? I can still feel you…" A wan little smile. "I can feel how worried you are right now."

"No…" He said. "We went deeper than we should have, as I said, because of the moon. It is more than a simple marriage bond, but the intensity of the empathic link will fade as the day goes on. You understand how important it is that no one knows what is between us?"

"Yes," she said softy.

Still frowning worriedly, he watched her touch her shoulder wound lightly.

He bent to kiss the tender spot. "You must heal my mark as a first priority today. It is only an outward symbol, and dangerous for you."

Half an hour later, his hands clenched, nails cutting into the meat of his palms, he pushed open the door of his father's sitting room. He bowed low and formally, sinking into a chair without a word of greeting.

"They tell me," his father began casually. "That it was Bardock's son who blew up the questioning unit and half the south wing of the Palace with it. Is this true?"

"It is," Vegita said shortly. "He is uncommonly strong." He clamped his hands on arms of his chair, thinking of that long dead nameless child, the son of Paragas. If his father suggested a similar remedy to the threat he might see in Romayn, Vegita would…he would try very hard to control himself. And perhaps fail.

But Ottousama only nodded mildly. "The scouters mounted in that section registered nearly five thousand. There is a wild, powerful strain in the brat's Turrasht ancestry. There's royal blood in the mountain folk of that region. They have been known to show bursts of amazing strength from time to time in moments duress, but it is always short lived. What are your plans for the boy?"

"I am training him. I will keep him close and set him to guard the cradle of my heir. As Nappa guarded me."

Ottousama made a noise of approval. "And having been coddled and fairly drowned in affection by that woman of yours during his formative years will give him an unnaturally strong sense of devotion. A wise choice." His father did not fail to notice the black wave of fury radiating from Vegita at the mention of Bulma. "You did not read the arrest report I sent you."

"I had other more pressing matters," Vegita snarled softly.

His father smiled slowly, baring all his teeth. "I suppose the capture of the Red Prince would take precedence." He chuckled, a rich sound of genuine pleasure. Vegita eyed him closely, and saw the dark, hollow circles of care and exhaustion around his father's eyes were slightly faded. It suddenly occurred to him that Ottousama must have had his first full night's sleep since the war began. The deep lines in his face, the hints of ray flecked through the auburn-tinted black of his hair were still there though. Vegita saw again the image of Ottousama's face, bloodless and still, saw his father's life's blood staining his hands-

"Hold onto the anger, boy," the soft growl of his father's voice broke through those black thoughts. "It will make it easier when the time comes."

But it had slipped away, at least for the moment. "I will find it again when the time comes, my father," Vegita replied without any outward exchange in the hard set of his features. "But until then…I will enjoy your company."

"A hundred years is a goodly amount of time to have ruled," the King of Vegita-sei murmured. "I wish to see the moon shine red upon our world once more. I wish to celebrate my reign, and honor my son, who has shielded Vegita-sei from attack with his left hand and torn out the enemy's heart and brains with his right. And then…then, I wish to rest, my son."

"It will be as you wish, father," Vegita said softly.

They burned Scopa's body that evening atop Med Center as though he were a Saiyan son of Vegita-sei slain in honorable combat. Bulma stood dry-eyed, shaking with grief, as she lifted the torch to the wood. The number of medics, slave and freedmen, who attended was not surprising. The shock lay in how many Saiyan warriors hung above the funeral in silent respect for the hand that had pulled so many of them back from death's door. Articha and Turna stood by, newly returned from delivering the shields to the colonies. Both raised wood to the pyre, as did Bardock and his squad-a thing unheard of. Though if that sent a ripple of surprise through the ranks of the assembled warriors, it was nothing compared to the gasps of astonishment that greeted Vegita when he lay his own shorn branch upon the blaze.

"It is just," he said in a loud voice, glaring up at the warriors hovering above them in the air, "that a Prince honor his good and faithful servants. Whosoever they be!"

"A good speech," his father told him later. "And a clever one. Word of it will spread throughout the Empire and serve to mollify the more valuable worlds-worlds we cannot afford at this juncture to purge-that are reluctant to climb down off the fence they've been sitting on for the last two years."

"It was not a political gesture," Vegita growled coldly. "A man who saved the life of the Prince of Vegita-sei more than once deserved better from us than to die in torment as a means to an end!"

"That is a lesson you will not learn until you sit on the throne, boy," Ottousama said grimly. "A king will sacrifice his servants-any one of his servants, from the highest to the most humble-for the good of the Empire."

And to that, Vegita had no answer. Because he knew with chill clarity that he would never have broken the geas without the rage and terror of seeing his woman in Mousrom's hands. Nothing less would have sufficed.

In the weeks that followed, all of Vegita-sei prepared for the coming of the moon. And Vegita…he reveled in a kind of content and joy at simply being alive he would never have imagined possible. By day, he trained and labored upon the portable rad shields for the fleet. In the evening…gods, had he ever imagined he knew any state of true happiness before this? She was his…all his. Mind and body and heart, twined around and within the fabric of his soul. And he was hers.

They had four weeks of perfection.

Four weeks, as the sky grew a deeper shade a crimson with each passing day, as tempers began to fray, as duels and brawls began to spring up everywhere like small tremors heralding a volcano's eruption, as Jeiyce lay in stasis inside the royal dungeons awaiting his death, guarded as no prisoner of Vegita-sei had even been. Four weeks in which Bulma built and refitted a half dozen troop carriers with her army of servo-bots, equipping the ships to haul twice the number of soldiers. Articha had petitioned the King formally in council for a royal requisition for the raw materials.

"Many of the younger females warriors-those no longer small children, but not yet of age-do not survive their first moon because their body's have not yet matured to desire and they are not yet strong enough to defend themselves against a world full of rutting males," the older woman's voice was bleak as the dead of winter, her eyes hard and haunted. "In decades past, I have nodded at this, thinking it just that only the strongest survive, remembering that I was only twelve my second moon and defended myself well enough. But I was uncommonly strong. Our numbers have been decimated by the war, Ou-sama, and we can ill afford to loose the girl children who will be lost during Moontime. Saiyan women are scarce at the best of time. The Chikyuu girl's ships can carry the full tally of girls between six and fourteen who are stationed on Vegita-sei."

The process of sequestering some twenty thousand Saiyan brats between the ages of infancy and five, would have been insurmountable had the on world population of youngsters been larger. But only a small percentage of Saiyan children were deemed strong enough to grow to maturity on the homeworld, and there were no brats in the incu-pods at present. The King had put a ban on all breeding a year ago for the duration of the war because incu-ward took up so many resources. As the entire ward was empty, it was a simple matter of sedating the bulk of the children and storing them in the incu-pods. But this only accommodated three quarters of the children, and even sedation and a shield of lunar reflectors would not put some of them out completely. As Scopa had said, Med Center would soon be a madhouse of hyper active brats.

At thirty days til Moontime, the process was nearly complete though the moon was still more than a month away. The brats were the first to loose their minds in the days preceding full moon, so it was necessary to knock them senseless earlier.

Four more weeks until Moontime…

He stood at the east window, watching the sun boil up into the reddish sky. Fall was here by the count of the calendar, but gods, it was hot…He listened to the sounds of morning, hearing Bulma stirring back in their rooms, the whir of the servo-bots preparing breakfast, hearing Romayn tearing through the garden and the yips of the dogs.

Perhaps it was the unusually strong link with his woman that anchored him to her cooler blood, or perhaps it was the heady joy he had been emmersed in since taking her to wife, since she had accepted with a glad heart all he wished to give, but at thirty scant days until moonrise, Vegita felt no ill effects. No shortness of temper, no increasing, irrational desire to change, to tear and crush in the sweet mindless joy of the Oozaru form. No insatiable, violent need to have his woman in an animal madness-

It was time to send her away, he thought grimly. Before, not after, he began to show symptoms of moon madness. A high yip of pain, followed by a terrified wail cut through his thoughts. He found Romayn sitting beside the whimpering figure of Yaro, sobbing in horror, one small fist crammed into his mouth. Baka was hiding under the trailing vine flowers nearby, whining in fear.

Vegita knelt and examined the prone beast. Its ribs and sternum were cracked. He touched a nerve at the base of the animal's skull and it stilled, unconscious. Romayn moaned faintly.

"You were playing tag with them?" Vegita asked quietly, though he knew already what must have happened.

The boy nodded. "I caught him and I-I hugged too hard…" Romayn was shuddering with hiccuping sobs. "I'm a bad boy! I h-h-hurt him!"

"Yes," Vegita said solemnly. "Do you see the sky, boy? How red it grows? More so each day."

"The moon?" Romayn sniffled.

"As it draws closer, we begin to go mad. We grow more violent, it becomes difficult to think, we become increasingly unable to control our basest impulses. Or to control our strength. That is why you hurt Yaro. The moon effects us more when we are very young."

"Edeeta…" The boy said with soft, dawning horror. "What if I hug Momma too hard?"

"That will not happen," Vegita told him. "Today you will go with her to Med Center and she will fix Yaro. Then she will give you an injection that will make you sleep for a month…until the moon had passed. When you wake, it will be all over." He glance up at the sudden sense of Bulma's presence in the garden doorway. She was watching them silently, her face as pale as bone. "And Bulma will stay with you, cloistered in the incu-ward…so that I do not hurt her."

She left him with a kiss and sweet words and departed, child and animals in tow. But she returned that afternoon, her beautiful face flushed, her eyes shining with fear and worry and joy.

"What is it?" He could not work out what the mismatched emotions playing across her features might mean.

"I'm pregnant," she said softly.

He simply stared at her, the words refusing to register in his mind, even as his mind played back through the delirious happiness of the night he had made her his mate, how he had held nothing in reserve as he made love to her…

Slowly, he knelt before her and lay his head against her flat stomach, searching inward. Oh gods…it was there. Strong and vibrant and growing and…

He closed his eyes tightly, thinking furiously, trying desperately to turn away from the truth he already knew, trying in vain to see a way around it.

But there was no way.

"What do you do," he had asked Scopa one evening during his months of forgetfulness in Bardock's house. "When it is a choice between saving the mother and saving the child?"

"I save the mother," Scopa's solemn ghost voice replied. "Always."

"I cannot let it be, Bulma." He said the words with more force than he intended.

She stared down at him for the longest time, her face almost confused, slowly blanching of all color. Then she sagged, sinking down to her knees beside him, limp as a doll in his arms. He held her tightly, waiting for some sort of reaction, tears of curses, but nothing came. A cold fist of ice locked around his heart as he drew back, staring into her slack face…Oh god…he knew that look, that unplugged, blank expression of 'not here'.

"Bulma!" He shook her, terror growing with each second she failed to react. "Bulma! BULMA!"

She shivered and focused on his face at the sound of his scream, and he wanted to sob like a child Romayn's age with relief. Slowly, gently, she disengaged herself from his arms and stood, straight and proud as the queen she would never be. When she raised her eyes to his again, they were clear and cold, her face a cool emotionless mask.

"It cannot be, Bulma," he repeated slowly, staring her down. "I am not yet King. The Empire is not yet out of danger. Even if these things had come to pass…Bulma, it would rend the Empire in half. You know this. There would be civil war, perhaps even open rebellion if my people decided I had lost my wits to have sired a half blood as my heir. And more than that…you would not live to bear the boy. Every warrior of my race will turn his hand against you when it is known what you carry. It is likely even Bardock's folk, and certainly Articha and Turna, would turn against us. I will not see you die!" He stood, his face hard and resolute, ready to battle her to the wall with the logic of his words, ready to command her as he had not in…in a very long time.

But she nodded her head in understanding, still cold and aloof, the threads of the invisible bond silent and motionless, telling him nothing-only that she was holding her heart separate from his be sheer force of will.

"I understand," she whispered. "I'll take care of it tonight." She turned on her heel and left, speaking softly as she walked away, not pausing. "Enjoy the festival, Ouji-sama," she said distantly. She left him kneeling, too stunned to speak or follow after her. She didn't look back as she went.

The days that followed were a red-rimming blur. He knew he must have added the finishing touches to securing a secondary shield around the shield generator itself, but he had no clear memory of any details. The villa was too quiet, silent as a tomb by night.

Bulma locked Med Center down two days later, buttressed and sealed in strictest quarantine now, shut away from the moon, even the air above which would carry the maddening scents of blood, battle and sex soon. From his woman came nothing but ominous silence, though he needed no medic underling on the vidlink telling him that Doctor Briefs was occupied at the moment to know that he had been…shut out. He could not feel her, any part of her, except a sense, an almost tangible mental image of a locked and bolted door that vented a cold gust of ice whenever his spirit drew near.

She was well guarded, at least. He had commanded Bardock, his squad, and as an afterthought, Rikkuum, to go into cloister with her, keeping order among the older brats too old for the incu-pods-and keeping her safe from any mishaps that might occur in the presence of so many over-excited Saiyan children.

The hurt, the numb, hollow helpless incomprehension of how quickly it had all gone to hell between them, lay down with him each night and worried at his every thought by day. Not that he was thinking too clearly as the last days before moonrise crept by. But he could not have let her keep the boy! He could not! To do so would be to destroy all they had fought to save, and condemn her and the boy to a violent death at the hands of his own people, sooner of later.

As the days drew out into weeks without a word from her, as the season of the moon drew closer, shredding the edges of his sanity, turning pain and loss to anger, a sweet, burning anticipation of the festival began to take hold of the foreground of his thoughts.

Eight days before moonrise, his father called him to a private audience that went...badly. Vegita sat before the older man, his eyes red-rimmed, hard with the effort it took to simply concentrate. The King seemed calmer, his eyes still coal black, his hands still steady. The moon always took the old in its teeth less violently.

"The Chikyuu woman," Ottousama ground out.

"Now is not the time for this conversation, Ottousama," Vegita cut him off in a low, tense voice, the image of Bulma's bloody, nailess little fingers leaping to his mind's eye, forcing him to clench his hands together…so that he would not wrap them around his father's throat.

"Do you know what they call her throughout the Capital, boy?" Ottousama went on as though he had not heard, as though he did not sense Vegita's rising anger. "The 'Saiyan no Ojo! You are the hero of the day today, but public opinion is a fickle mistress. At the moment, they look upon your devotion to the girl with indulgent amusement. But it will soon become readily apparent that she is more than an eccentric passion, and that you have no plans to set her aside. Ever." Vegita stared at him stonily, not contradicting this truth. His father uttered an irritable growl. "Your people have not forgotten that your sanity was in question, that your rank and title were stripped from you only a few short weeks ago. What will you do when they begin to whisper that the 'Saiyan no Ojo' is the true heir to my throne? That she controls your weak, broken mind and rules through you as-"

"What do you want, old man?!" Vegita snarled, standing up, leaning forward into his father's face, red eyes blazing murderously into the old man's black gaze.

"See to her, boy," Ottousama said softly. "Now. Tonight. Quick and painless while she sleeps."

The silence stretched out between them, cold and deadly.

"Not tonight, my father," Vegita finally whispered. "Not ever."

"You never read the arrest report I sent you," the King snapped. "Distance yourself from the fact that the girl is your most treasured possession and think like a king! Your former chef was a top Red Network operative. Your kitchen wenches were high level informants, passing information to Zarbon, and through him, to Jeiyce. The Rashai-jin passed stolen council notes and records, war plans and fleet movements to the Red Prince even after he began to travel about the Empire as part of the morale corp. Through the kitchen slaves? Perhaps…but in the year before you left to go to war, who had better access to your personal effects? Who had the best reason to hate you and every Saiyan alive, of all the slaves in your household? I do not believe she was a servant of the rebels very long. I think the attack on Arbatsu soured her toward the rebels, and the gift you made to her of Bardock's son sealed her loyalty to you for all time. And now," his father snorted. "She is every pit as besotted with you as you with her. But she was inside their ranks at one point, and she knew Zarbon for what he was. Who could have warned Zarbon, and thus Jeiyce, of the purge of Shikaji? Not the maid servants. Who did you tell before you left, Saiyan no Ouji? Who, outside the royal council, knew?!"

Vegita shook his head. "No…no! You are discounting too much! Surveillance and-and the Madrani pilots and tech who flew the troop carriers, and…" He did not wish to, could not, have this argument now! He could barely think coherently, let alone list the dozens of possible leaks surrounding the assault on Shikaji that did not point to his woman. "Later…" He managed to say. "We will speak of this after…"

"Later then," Ottousama growled into the tension-riddled silence. "When you are thinking more clearly.

On the eve of moonrise, he sat in his chair by the west window, gazing out at the bloody sunset, growling softly like an animal in the early stages of rabidity. Thinking of her face…cold and beautiful as she stood there hating him for choosing her safety, her life, over their son's.

_And she was there, lovely and serene, an ocean of bottomless sadness sunk inside the blue of her eyes. She took his shaking hand silently, laying it aside her face. Her mind and heart were still a barred, opaque vault shut against him, but her eyes were…serene, without doubt or reserve, as she pressed her lips against his._

_"Woman…" He growled softly, through clenched, too-sharp teeth. "You must go…please…" But his hands were already reaching for her. She melted against his body, a perfect fit, soft to his hardness._

_"I had too see you!" She breathed against his mouth. "I had to-to hold you again…Oh Kami help me, I love you! I can't stop loving you!"_

_He didn't answer. He lifted her off her feet in both arms and carried her back into the bedroom._

He watched her until she was out of sight, the haunting strains of her sweet durge still ringing in his ears. His heart was caught in his throat, his stomach snarled in a twisted knot. _Fool!_ Why had he not turned her away last night?! Why?! To have taken her to his bed on the very eve of moonrise was beyond unforgivable!

But it would be well again. _I love you,_ she had said. _Kami help me, I can't stop loving you!_ It would take time for things to be right between them again, but…_I love you, Vegita…_She was his and would remain so, her anger forgotten if not her grief. He had not lost her or her heart. He wanted to shriek at the sky with joy, even through the horror of what he had done to her.

Today he would begin the festival with the execution of the Red Prince at sunset. And with that first victorious bloodletting, the season of the moon would begin. _A glad day_, he thought, closing his eyes, his chest vibrating as he purred softly-and he saw again the nightmare image of the wounds and claw marks he had put on Bulma's body-

Damndamndamn! _Why_ had she come last night?!

But there was no reason to reign in grief or regret or-or anything today, was there? Not today. Tonight the moon would come and he would rage and roar to the blood-red heavens and it would be good!

He flew over the Capital, eyes brushing across the overflowing spaceport on the rim of the coast. Some of the newest arrivals had been crammed onto the same landing pads. All the children of Vegita-sei who could find the means to come home had returned for his father's Centennial and the coming of the moon. The city was still. Ominously so. All guard duty and barracks drills, all work and formality of any kind was set aside for the next three nights, with the one exception of those warriors he had hand picked to guard the shield generator. Everyone would lie inside in a fitful sleep all this day, fighting the growing urge to change until the celebration commenced. He wheeled in the air, swooping lower back toward the Palace. The streets of the city were littered with the bodies of wounded who had taken the worst of some fight or brawl during the night. They lay in their own blood, untended, nursing their injuries as best they could. Med Center was a shielded fortress now, and no help or aid would come from the healers inside until the moon had passed. He had never once in his life thought to question this, he mused darkly, but…so much Saiyan blood had been spilled in the last three years. And now they would celebrate victory by killing each other. He shook his head with a soft snarl, trying to clear it, wiping the sweat from his face. The heat was rising steadily, burning inside his skin, even with the warm wind whipped in his face as he flew.

He knew it was foolish to be out of doors before nightfall, but there was something he must do. There were questions he must ask his enemy, and tonight would be too late.

The route he took through the palace passages, down into the lowest level of the royal dungeons, was a dim blur, but with each floor he descended, he felt his mind clear a bit more. The guards before the energy stasis field were cool and lucid, their eyes black and unclouded by moon madness, though they seemed to be as drenched in their own sweat as Vegita. It was only marginally cooler here, even this far below ground.

"Feeling a bit out of sorts today, laddie?" Jeiyce asked him cordially. The bastard was lounging inside his cell, only a few hours from a gruesome, violent execution, and he showed no concern, no expression other than his habitual easy grin.

"It is nearly midday, Prince of Maiyosh," Vegita said grimly. "In seven hours, I will tear your heart from your chest and eat it. Then I will toss your carcass to my nobles and they will devour what remains."

"Decent of you to kill me first," Jeiyce murmured.

"There are two things I wish to know. If you tell me true, I swear to you as Saiyan no Ouji, who will very soon be king, and upon my honor as a warrior of Vegita-sei, that I will spare the lives of all the non-combatants and children of your race when they are found. They may live planetbound and unmolested on the worlds you have hidden them on, so long as they never raise a fist against the Empire again. You will die, your war will be lost, but your people will live on."

Jeiyce was no longer smiling, but eyeing him with a sharp wary frown. He knew enough of Saiyan law and custom to know how binding such an oath would be on Vegita's part. "Just for the sake of argument," he said quietly. "What two things would you like to know?"

"Where is Dodoria?"

"Oh," Jeiyce grinned. "I guess you would want to tear his heart out too. Fair enough. But I haven't a clue. He was on Tsiru-sei, but he left in a hurry just after you arrived. He had an appointment to deliver quite a number of packages to our mutual friend Zarbon." The Maiyosh-jin's grin widened. "Not to worry though. I don't know precisely where Dodoria is at the moment, but I do know he has plans to call on you very soon."

"Here on Vegita-sei?" Vegita said with a grim smile. "He must be very anxious to die."

"Next question?" Jeiyce asked amiably.

"Who is the mastertech? The man who built the miniaturization capsules, the invisibility shields and the Ki-killers?"

"Again, no idea," Jeiyce leaned forward, peering into Vegita's damp face, smiling slightly. "Zarbon was my go-between. The stubborn bastard would never give up the engineer's name or location to us, even after the squeamish little gearhead backed out and stopped making new weapons. The Mastertech could be anyone. Could have been Zarbon's little Madrani boyfriend for all I know. How's that fever of your, Prince Vegita? Still rising?"

"What the hell are you talking about?!" Vegita snapped. The man knew more than this. He must! He was lying through his-

"Dodoria left Tsiru-sei with a shipment of packages for Zarbon and his cell of spies," Jeiyce said softly. "They all have specialized long duration camo-shields that allow them to move around for weeks at a time unseen and masks their Ki as well. Three weeks ago, Saiyan no Ouji, Zarbon of Rashia-sei brought a gift to Vegita-sei and all her children. The Tsiru-jin Plague."

"What...Vegita hissed. He was shivering in the cloying heat, trying to absorb the man's words.

Soft laughter, the stuff of nightmares, rippled out of the stasis shield. "It's part of the reason we set up shop on Tsiru-sei in the first place. We re-engineered the bug that killed al the Tsiru-jin, boyo. Redesigned it especially for the Saiyan race. While I've taken a well deserved vacation these last few weeks, Dodoria and Zarbon have been busy as hive insects, making sure every planet in known space infested with your kind had been thoroughly hosed down with the virus at the same time. It's a nasty one, too, Vegita. Hemmoragic. It's been incubating inside your entire race for twenty days now. We timed the release of the bug bombs so we'd have a special present to give your father on the day of his Centennial. And because of the moon's arrival, no one on Vegita-sei would think twice when they began to show symptoms. Clever, huh?"

"You lie!" Vegita slammed both hands against the stasis force field with a roar of rage. It was a lie! A foolish, desperate, dead man's fantasy.

"Your people started dying last night and no one noticed," Jeiyce crooned. "Anyone who saw bodies lying around in public just took them for early casualties of Moontime. If you disbelieve me, laddie, go back up and look around. Do it quickly though. The plague hits like a Ki burst-all at once. By the time the fever sweats start, you've only got an hour or so left. Go up, Prince of Vegita-sei. You are the strongest of your race." Jeiyce laughed merrily. "You'll probably last long enough to see your whole world die before you."

He shook like a leaf with the effort it took not to kill the man before him. But some deep instinct, the horror-ridden eye of his own imagination that could visualize his world burned, his people hunted and butchered like vermin, his woman and all those he valued slain, told Vegita that death would be a mercy to this man. It was what Jeiyce wanted. He wheeled and hurled himself into the lift to the surface, twisting his mind away from the flushed, feverish faces if Jeiyce's guards.

It was a lie! A lie, a lie!

He hit the landing as the lift slowed to a halt and sped through the palace, not thinking, not questioning where his feet were taking him until he reached his destination, not looking to either side to note the hot, crypt-like silence, the empty, still halls until he stumbled over the stiff, gore-splattered corpses of the Elite Royal Guards who had stood outside the King's private wing of rooms. No one would notice the blood today, or even think to wonder why the King had not yet risen, well past noon...

Nonono!

He tore the doors of their hinges, scanning with bleary senses for the presence he knew as well as his own Ki signature. He stood on the threshold of his father's bedchamber, trembling like the tiny boy who had stood in these rooms years ago, awaiting punishment for some tantrum or misbehavior. He pushed through the swinging door to the bedroom, cursing himself for a shivering coward...

"Ottousama," Vegita said in a remarkably steady voice. He sat down in the chair of the bedside study, a testament to the axiom that a King and sleep were never well aquatinted. A surreal wave of horror washed over him, a shaking denial of what his eyes were seeing...and all that it meant.

The King of Vegita-sei had never made it out of his bed. He-he must have begun to bleed out in his sleep and awakened too weak to move or call out.

"Boy?" The dead man whispered, a hellish, cracked echo of his deep, harsh rumble.

"I am here, Father," Vegita whispered.

"Poison..." Ottousama murmured. "...bad death for a warrior...sneaky Maiyosh-jin...finally got me."

Vegita said nothing. Gods of small mercies, let him die believing that! Without knowing that-that all his race were-were-

"I've lived long..." Vegita-ou choked and spat black, thick blood, heart's blood "Sooner have died fighting...man cannot have everyth..." One red-stained hand gripped Vegita's, his entire, thick-muscled frame convulsing with effort as he fought for his last, blood-choked breaths. "You...made me proud, boy! So very prou..."

No trump sounded. The heavens did not fall. No cry or herald hailed the passing of Vegita, Saiyan no Ou, Emperor by his own strong, bloody hand of all the galaxy. He simply died.

Vegita heard himself make some sort of soft snarling moan. The room was spinning in a scarlet whirl of horror. It could not be so! Not all of Vegita-sei...not everyone! He launched himself through the roof with a shriek of denial, whipping low through the city, looking down with new eyes, seeing the bodies strewn through the streets, curled into poses of wrenching agony in their rigor. The blood...the blood looked like nothing more than some weakling who'd been fool enough to get himself beaten to death. He was not aware of just when it really struck him, the full weight and inescapable, horrific scale of it all. He did not know when he began to wail like a grief-maddened shade, for his father, for his people, for his world, tearing in aimless, burning circles in a wide, flaming wheel above the Capital, giving way to the change in a screaming, sobbing fury that grew to a monstrous roar. And because of this, he did not see the beam of light that cut him down.

He was lying on his back, unbound, on a soft bed of grass. There was a biting, burning pain, lancing up his spine from the raw wound where his tail had been. His tail...

A hand slapped his face hard, and he shuddered, his guts twisting like a knot of writhing vipers, and he spat a burbling mouthful of clotted blood. The sun had moved round, dipping low in the west, since he had fallen. Or had someone struck him down? Memory rolled back over him and he sobbed weakly, trying to rise. A booted heel pushed him back down. He sank back, gasping. His blood was on fire, boiling inside his veins like lava pumping through a fissure in the earth, blistering his heart with each beat. He slowly focused on the face hovering over him.

"Jeiy-je-"

"Don't die yet, Vegita," Jeiyce grinned down at him.

"He's not even close to snuffing it," said another familiar voice. Zarbon. "Take care, my Lord. He looks bad off, but most of it's from the cannon and having the shit kicked out of him after we shot off his tail. He's still strong."

He was lying in the center of a growing legion of alien warriors and slaves, men and women of every description, every race. The gentle slope of the grass hilltop was one he knew well, a green range of ridges on the south edge of he Capital that looked across a forest valley gorge on the white gleaming walls of Med Center.

Bulma...

"He's already begun to bleed out, Zarbon," Jeiyce disagreed. "He won't be getting up again. Ever. His strength is a curse in this. He'll take a long time to die."

"We can't penetrate the shield with the cannons or Ki blasts, my Prince," a man shouted. "And if we send men closer than half a click the reactive field fries them!"

"Bitch," Jeiyce swore softly. "Get her on the vidcom."

"Bul..." Vegita moaned in a cracked whisper.

"She's just fine," Zarbon told him. "At the moment, she's being an obstinate pain in the ass!"

How long...how long since she had locked Med Center down...Oh gods, yes! Zarbon and his legions of invisible assassins had released the virus twenty days ago, but Med Center had been sealed off in quarantine for twenty-eight days! With nearly thirty thousand Saiyan children slumbering below, isolated and uninfected! Thirty thousand!

"It's not over until we break the seals and take care of every little monkey inside!" Someone shouted harshly. "They'll come back to haunt our grandchildren if we let them be, my Prince!"

"No one's walking away from an incomplete purge," Jeiyce said firmly. "If that spineless Namek hadn't ratted us out-"

"She's on the vid!" The tech's voice said.

"Knock-knock, lovey," Jeiyce said with soft menace. "Let us in or we'll blow this planet out from under you."

"We don't want to hurt you or your staff, Bulma," Zarbon said anxiously. "We just-"

"Want to come in and kill all the children," Bulma's voice was like a razor hewn from ice. "Fuck you both! Bang away at the shield until you all drop dead of old age. You don't have any weapons that can stand up to mine. The two of you should know that better than anyone."

"Bulma-" Zarbon's voice sounded strained, like a man being slowly ripped in half by divided loyalties.

"Don't Bulma me, you goddam baby killer!" she hissed. "Scopa's in Heaven right now cursing you for what you've done!"

"Scopa's in Heaven because of those vicious, murdering monsters whose brats your protecting!" Zarbon spat. "He was the best man, the kindest, most good soul either of us have even known and they repaid him for all his good deeds by tearing him to pieces! They-they-" The blue-skinned man stepped back from the vidcom and turned away, choking with hate and grief.

"Fine," Jeiyce said, with no outward sign of regret. "But we will have them, Lady. By hook or by crook." He shut the transmission off with a snap and glanced down at the tech at the small communication's field console. "Any word from our man on the inside? Is he even still alive?"

The tech grinned, pressing an old style, binary communications headphone to one ear. "He's not been able to take care of the kiddies, for some reason..." The mad paused, listening. "He's at the shield server right now...He says five minutes!"

_Bulma..._

Vegita squeezed his eyes shut against the increasing sense of...of fullness behind his eyes, a growing pressure that seemed to be feeding from the fever that was slowly ripping his body apart from the inside. He pushed the heat-soaked edge of his consciousness out, through the cords of the too-deep tie, the link that was something less than a moonbond, but far, far deeper it should have been.

_Bulma!_

_Ve-Vegita?_ Faint and hesitant, but she was there.

_The shield around Med Center! The server! Jeiyce had a man inside Med Center, Bulma! He is seconds away from sabotaging the shield!_

_Oh Kami...it's Hiru!_ The sense of her voice, strident and terrified. _Bardock! Toma! Rikkuum! Vegita says Hiru's at the shield server! He-he's going to-!_

A deafening shockwave blasted over the little army on the hillock as their ranged pulse cannons fired point blank on Med Center in unison.

"The shield is..." The tech checked his scanner. "He's done it! Hiru's fed it some kind of virus! It's weakening!"

_No!_ Bulma's voice in his head. _No..._

"Blast 'em again, lads!" Jeiyce cried.

"Bulma..." Vegita croaked to the blue-skinned man standing above him. "Your friend?"

"Yes," Zarbon seemed to see Vegita for the first time, as the words jostled him out of his own dark tortured thoughts. "She was my friend. She's brave, good woman, and you made her a slave and a whore. She deserved a lot better than you, you bastard."

"...could say the same of...Scopa...He would have been...proud of you...killing children."

A boot slammed into his gut with bone-breaking force. "Don't you speak his name, you piece of shit! Don't you dare!"

Another thunderous boom, as the cannons fired again. "Don't kill him yet, Zarbon!" Jeiyce cried. "Not until he sees Med Center fall. Not until he and I are even!"

_How bad is it, girl?_ Bardock's voice was saying.

I _can stabilize it! But I need a few minutes...oh gods, just a couple more-_

"Even..." Vegita locked one shaking fist around the Rashia-jin's ankle. "Bulma...and Romayn...Jeiyce means to kill them...payment for...deaths of his woman and son!"

The man's golden eyes flickered with doubt. "Bulma won't be harmed. And Rom-kun..." He stumbled over the boy's name. "I-I can't help him," he said sadly, "But Bulma-"

"Bulma," Jeiyce cut him off coldly. "Should have thought of the consequences before she turned traitor to the Red Network! Too bad for her. I'll grant no quarter to collaborators!" The assembled throng of rebels roared in agreement, a mob scenting blood, as another volley of shot rained upon the shield and it seemed to buckle this time.

"You said she'd be left alone!" Zarbon wheeled on him, suddenly nose to nose with his Prince, gripping the smaller man by his forearms. "You swore she would-"

The sounds of the two mens' escalating shouts and curses were being drowned inside a rhythmic thunder, ringing inside Vegita's ears, drumming inside his chest. It was his own heartbeat.

_Bulma..._

_Oh gods, Vegita!_ A sense of maddened, furious effort. _We're not going to make it! I need more time to fix what he's done! Oh God, oh Kami...they're going to kill all the children!_

Vegita lay on his back, forgotten in the tussle between Jeiyce and Zarbon, in the furor of the men repriming their cannons for the blow that would shatter Med Center's shield like brittle glass.

_When you have seen your woman dragged out by her hair and raped to death, _Jeiyce had said. _Your foster son taken by his heels and his brains dashed out...then you and I will be even! Not before!_

Bulma, Romayn...his people, his worlds, his father, his-his everything!

"We will not be even!" Vegita whispered, his eyes wide and crimson, hitching shallow gasps of wet, labored breath. He smiled through fanged jaws at the red orb, rising over the hilltops to the east, drowning the image of everything else in the heavens. Fools...to have thought that taking his tail would matter, now that the moon had come!

His back arched in agony, his eyes stinging with his own blood, full of the moon, the red, glorious moon, that blotted out a full third of the night sky as it rose. A jolting wrench, as though his spine were being tore out through his backside...and his tail grew back.

He rose up like an erupting volcano, morphing into the razor-clawed, fanged beast of rut and Moontime, not Oozaru not yet wholly a man. He scattered the men around him in all directions, like dead leaves blown before the winds of an on-coming storm, wailing in an ear-shattering roar of loss and fury and grief. Something was tearing loose inside his chest, his guts, rupturing behind his eyes. It was crack in his self, deeper and more mortal than any depth Jeiyce's tortures had ever managed to plumb. He could feel something slipping loose from his grasp, something fracturing irreparably in his soul. Too many things lost in too short a time.

And he broke a second time in his life. Not in agony, not in despair, hovering inside a rising storm of power. Not for glory or for revenge...but because he simply could not lose. The last lesson of kingship, a weeping, bitter epiphany, and a truth Jeiyce and his men had somehow forgotten-that a man who fights for his own hate and vengeance will never be as strong as a man with something left to lose. A man protecting everything that matters to him in the universe. His entire being had caught fire, his blood, his body, his brain, bathing him in an amber flame of power, burning inside a golden nimbus that lit the deepening red skies of dusk bright as daybreak. He splintered the cannons surrounding the besieged fortress, feeling the fever in his body leap higher still, like the fires of a dying star, burning brightest just before it fails...

_Super Saiyan..._ Bardock's hushed voice, echoing through the filter of Bulma's mind, full of awe and hope. _He will save us in the hour of our greatest need..._

Slashing and crushing weapons and flesh in a blinding blur of lightning quick strikes...they were no match for him. He could feel the ripping finality of something giving way terminally inside his head. Blood was flowing freely from-from everywhere, the sign of the virus taking him into its death cold arms at last.

_That's it!_ Bulma was crying ecstatically. _I did it! It's back online, it-oh gods, Vegita...Vegita!_

_Bul..._

The red night pressed in on him, pulling him down. As he spun downward, he propelled himself with one last burst of strength, to the best place, the only place on Vegita-sei, he wished to sleep in death.

He woke in dim light, fresh dew soaking his face and hair, morning mist clinging to the hills around his villa, threading through the trailing ivy and blood-hued Chikyuu-jin roses that lay around him, their sweet scent hanging thick in the cool morning air. The morning smelled of fall. The heat must have finally broken during the night. If he must die, there was no finer place to fall than this garden...

The soft pillow under his head shifted and warm lips touched his bloody mouth, blue silk hair brushing his face as she bent over him. He tried to speak, to ask her if she was a dream. He tried to move his mouth, but he could not. He was spent.

_Med Center?_

"The shield is in place," she answered softly, smiling sadly. "You did it, Vegita...you saved us. Your people will live on. Because of you." She laid her fingers over his lips as he fought to speak. "Shhh...I don't have much time. They...they scooped up a section of land under the rad shield generator and tossed the whole thing up into the inner shield barrier. The rad shield is gone, and Jeiyce's back-up will be here any hour now. Listen to me...Nail was Red Network, but when he learned about the virus he warned me. He said he wouldn't be party to the murder of innocents. We only learned about the plague bombs after they'd released the virus on every world in the Empire, but it was after I sealed up Med Center in cloister, so no one inside was exposed. I have a vaccine, Vegita. For all the children, for Bardock and his people, for Articha and Turna and all the girls on their ships if we can find them before they become exposed. But it will only work if you haven't already contracted it. It can't help you..." Her voice was measured and calm as she spoke...too calm. He suddenly knew that she was reliving the death of her homeworld even as she grieved for this world of enemies she had begun to call home. Those brilliant crystal blue eyes were dry and unblinking as she held him, sitting in the ruins of her flowers garden, as he fought against each stalling falter of his own heart to spare her what she would surely see if she stayed longer.

_Bulma, go...Do not watch me die..._

"I had to tell you," she said gently. I had to let you know..."

He pushed into the link a little further, and through the stunned swirl of her grief and sorrow for the death of the world that had made her a slave, he saw the entirety of everything that was her...and he saw the door, that door that had remained barred and bolted as he made her his, even while she opened her heart to him in every other way. But there was no barrier now. That door was swung wide...

It coalesced in his battered mind as he saw dozens of pieces of information weaving themselves together to tell him a secret that should have been no surprise. She had been the Red Network's hidden engineer. Jeiyce's Mastertech. It was she who had drawn up the plans and meticulous specs of construction for the capsules...for the invisibility shields...for the Ki-killers. She had run to the open arms of the Rebels during her first year as his slave, almost from the first day he had brought her to the Capital.

She had turned from the Red Network in horror, just as Ottousama guessed, when she saw firsthand the use Jeiyce was putting her inventions to. Her inventions were responsible for...oh gods, for billions of Saiyan deaths, responsible for his capture at the hands of the enemy, responsible for the army of spies who had moved about every Saiyan world, unseen, as they released the plague that-

_No..._

Yes. Of course. And here, as he lay numbering his last breaths, he could not look away from the second truth he saw. His hands were as filthy with the blood of his people as hers. If not for his own deeds-the death of Raditz and the child, the months of that first summer when he had used her like an animal, breaking her body, crushing her spirit; if not for the year that had followed, when he had enjoyed her as a thing he possessed, pampering and abusing her as his childish, mercurial moods dictated-if not for him, she would never have wrought, unknowingly, the engines of his world's destruction. An entire empire felled in the space of a day. Dead by the hand of Jeiyce of Maiyosh...dead by the hand of Zarbon of Rashia-sei...dead by the hand of Bulma of Chikyuu...and dead by the hand of Vegita, Saiyan no Ouji.

"No..."

"Oh Kami..." She moaned. "I didn't mean for you to see that!" She shook her head slowly, brushing away the tears that had brimmed at his eyes. "It's not your fault! It's not! I did it! I was stupid and gullible. I didn't know what they would do with the things I made...and I trusted Zarbon. I only wanted the Rebels to be able to defend themselves...to be able to hide their families with the camo-shields." She sighed like a woman on the verge of tears, but still, she didn't weep. "I'll save the children, Vegita. The shield bubble around Med Center can withstand even the quantum stresses of hyper light speed. I have two carrier engines built into the foundations, on the focal point of the shield. In one hour, I'm going to blast Med Center off and drive it like a ship to a new world. Somewhere no one will find us. I didn't mean for my work to be used the way Jeiyce used it, Vegita. But I have _cho-gugol_ to all of your people because of it. And I won't let them down. But none of this is what I came to tell you."

He saw what she had come to tell him, cradled in her heart like the most precious thing in creation…which it surely was.

_Our son…_

She stroked his face, feather light, her voice still gentle. "Do you really think I would let you kill another child of mine, Vegita?"

He shuddered in her arms, shifting weakly, trying to move, trying to ride out the force of the icy blast of hate, of betrayal, of screaming grief for the love she had felt for him. The love he had torn to bloody shreds the day she told him he had put her with child, along with a goodly portion of her sanity. The sweet, lilting song she had sung this morning, the lullaby dirge she had sung to her firstborn after he was dead, was echoing inside her head, a haunting anthem of quiet madness. She had stood strong and unbowed by all the long list of evils he had done her…and he had destroyed her, in the end, trying to save her.

_I chose you, Bulma! You above the boy…you above…above everything!_

"There's always another option," she said softly, implacable as admantium steel. "I put him in an incu-pod and let you think I'd aborted him. I'll tell him when he's older how his father was brave and strong…how he died to save his people. He's going to be beautiful, Vegita. All the good in you and me and none of the bad. I wanted you to know about him. I wanted you to know that something of you will go on. That it won't be as though you never lived." Her blue eyes were chill and distant, like frozen waters lying beneath a glacier. Cold and incongruously full of love as she looked on him. Mad. She stroked his brow, smiling sweetly down at him.

"Your fever's broken. The virus…if you're strong enough, you can survive it. At a price. The cerebral swelling and hemorrhaging ruptures and destroys the centers of your brain where your power resides. Your Ki. If I gave you enough blood, you would survive…but you'd live the rest of your life powerless."

Was she offering him the chance to die with his world, with honor, as a warrior, rather than live on? King of a dead world. A Ki-less weakling…

"Bulma…" He whispered, raw and broken. "I will live…take me…" _I will live. I do not care about-about-_ His mind snagged on the very thought of living without Ki, a cripple and a weakling, but he ground his teeth. I learned late that the greatest measure of a King's strength does not lie in his fighting power. Bear me to Med Center. I will live to lead my people. I will live to be yours, woman, if it can ever be made right again! Take me back…

_"No," she said with soft finality. She eased his head down onto the bed of thorny flowers, red as his own fresh blood, and stood above him, gazing down at his upturned, agonized face. "I can't love you anymore, Vegita. I can't have you in my heart and my head. It's killing me, one little piece at a time. I finally realized that when you told me to kill our baby. It's killing me…And I have to live for Rom-kun and our son and all the other children. I love you…I'll always love you." She sobbed, a tiny little choking noise, though her eyes remained dry. "So, I have to let you die." Her gaze swept the ruins of her garden, most of it blasted by the heat and force of his fall._

_"All my pretty flowers…" She brushed the tears from her face, almost absently. "I'll make them grow again. I always do." Then she reached down and calmly took the hem of her dress, pulling it gently from his clutching hand._

_The world was swimming in tears, for all that was lost and ruined and rent beyond repair or redress. And for the love-mad and boundless and forever, like the twinned souls of moonbound warriors, just as she had said it would be when she drove the blade home, straight through his heart, and finally took her revenge. The love he could not shed for all the deaths and crimes that lay between them. He would love her until his soul itself shriveled and died._

_"…love you…forever…" He whispered._

_She bent and kissed him, deep and warm, like a promise that would never be fulfilled. "I love you, Vegita," she said. "I love you…" She slowly pulled away from him…and she was gone._

_He lay for a long time, slipping in and out of consciousness, watching the sun rise on the last day of his world, weeping softly. _I will die now…I will die. _There was nothing left to live for. Nothing at all._

_A gust of wind struck him hard and lifted him into the air._

_He was lying on his back, on a hard barracks cot, listening the low, even hum of ship's engines. A large, anxious face bent over him, heavy-browed under a shock of bright red hair._

_"Rikkuum…" Vegita said in a cracked rasp._

_"Your Lady said you were dead, but I knew it was not so," the big man said. "I have seen this plague before. It does not kill the strongest. I knew what to do to make you live." He gestured to the clumsily rigged infusion drip needled into the Vegita's arm. "I found some others alive, too."_

_Vegita did not respond. He only stared at the giant warrior._

_"Your-your Lady carried this ship, made tiny with her capsules, in her med satchel. She showed it to me. I took it." Rikkuum held up the pilfered satchel in one huge hand. "It has many things inside. I found the blood supplies to give you in here also." The warrior swallowed apprehensively and leaned forward, his expression strained. "My last master, Lord Frieza, slew himself when he survived the plague and found he was-was without any power. Do you mean to live, Ouji-sama?"_

_Vegita sat up shakily, feeling through the rhythms of his still weak body for a long, measuring moment. There was no sense of his power. Nothing._

_It would be easy, so easy, to die now. It would be a mercy in almost every sense. But…his Saiyan body, his own integral nature, would not, could not, lie down and die. He could feel his body beginning to slowly rebound. The healing factor of his kind was already rebuilding his cells, rekindling his physical strength. "I am hungry," he said softly._

_He dragged himself to his feet as Rikkuum went to seek food, and staggered past the inert forms of the other men the big man had saved._

_There were four of them. He made it through the hold and onto the small bridge without collapsing and sat down heavily in the captain's chair, staring at the endless expanse of streaming stars flickering past on the forward view screen._

_"I will find you, woman," he whispered harshly. "I will."_

_(COMING SOON: Chapter IV-Vegita searches for Bulma and the other survivors of Vegita-sei, but Jeiyce is searching as well. And we finally get a look inside Bulma's point of view…through the diary Vegita finds in her med satchel.)_


	4. Chapter 4

**DISCLAIMER: **I DON'T OWN DBZ OR ANY CHARACTER OF THE SAME. I'M NOT RECEIVING ANY MONEY FROM THE WRITING OF THIS PIECE OF FAN FICTION.

**WARNING: **ALL YE UNDER 18 GO AWAY NOW! This fic contains violence, adult themes, sex, and profanity. It is not my usual romantic drama/adventure, and has some very dark, disturbing imagery and themes related to rape. If this is not your thing, don't read it.

**FORWARD:** This is a WHAT IF scenario that Toshiba and I discussed initially, and from those conversations grew this dark, dark story. I've been accused, on occasion, of having a very evil imagination. I may have outdone myself here. For all those who enjoy the often-used theme of "Bulma is taken to Vegita-sei as a slave and catches the eye of the Saiyan no Ouji", here's my version of the tale.

**EXTRA WARNING:** This chapter contains graphically detailed descriptions of rape and large scale terrorism.

**CHAPTER IV**

_For four months, they traveled here and there aimlessly, avoiding contact with other space-faring races. At the end of the third week of meandering, Vegita set his mind to a course of action, and plotted a direct course to their destination. He did not respond to any of his companions' tentative questions as to where they were going. Four months, and they finally reached the outer-most frontier of the Empire...the Empire that was no more._

_Of the four other survivors Rikkuum had rescued from Vegita-sei, two took their own lives in the first week after the end-the end of everything. The remaining two, young warriors of an age with Vegita, were made of sturdier stuff._

_Vegita ate little and spoke less as they traveled. Bleak, gray day bled into dream-harrowed night, growing in a steady progression of time into weeks, then months. He began to train with Rikkuum for the better part of each waking day out of habit, and to relieve the nervous energy of unaccustomed inactivity. His body was still strong, his reflexes and fighting skills undiminished. If the big warrior did not use his ki in any way during a bout, Vegita could still best him every time. If he didn't use his ki..._

_"Perhaps it will heal," Rikkuum suggested hopefully, as the four of them fought into the tenth hour of a tag team match. The ship had reached the outer spiral arms a few days ago, the very edge of civilized space. The systems they still carefully skirted were growing less dense, less technologically advanced. "Your head, I mean," the great fool elaborated helpfully, dodging Vegita's furious roundhouse and the flurry and lightning fast blows that followed. "All men say that your people always heal from what does not kill them...and return all the stronger."_

_Vegita snarled a wordless affirmation. The lunkhead had finally, after several months to think it over, touched on the thing that kept his two Saiyan companions going, when there was nothing else to live for. The hope, distant and fragile, that the centers of their brains that governed ki would heal slowly, given time._

_Vegita had taken turns with the other two survivors of the wreck of Vegita-sei, spending one-hour, therapeutic sessions in the ship's on regen tank. They had done this every day since the fall of their homeworld._

_Thus far...thus far, it had not helped a wit._

_He could feel nothing, touch nothing, sense nothing, of the near god-like power that the Tsiru-jin plague had burned from his brain like a wildfire consuming dry grassland. Nothing..._

_The medical texts filed in the ship's database, a compiled generalized knowledge from scores of worlds, held nothing that could give him an answer one way or another, and nothing related to this sort of malady where his Saiyan's were concerned. The sons of Vegita-sei did not take ill under any set of natural circumstances._

_Hope was a cruel, taunting siren to his companions, he knew. Lying down with them each night, soothing them into troubled sleep-and fleeing at the beginning of each new day. For Vegita, not weighed or baited by hope himself, waking was worst. Rising through the waters of sleep to the phantom scent of dying rose petals and the sweet sound of his woman's voice singing softly..._

_"Will we stop soon, Ouji-sama?" Coran gasped from where he lay bleeding and perspiring across the width of the ship's hold. He had been Vegita's warm up match and had taken the worst of the Prince's morning battle with despair that only found a voice through his fists. Coran's brother and squad lieutenant Okuda sat silently beside him, waiting his turn to spar with wordless patience, sunken inside his own thoughts. Coran was well-spoken and educated, a nobleman ranked as super Elite-a welcome relief from Rikkuum's loyal but dull-witted retainership on those rare occasions when Vegita felt like conversing at all. His younger brother spoke only when addressed, sometimes not even then. At first, Vegita had merely assumed that this was a sign that the younger warrior would shortly be opting out of a life without power, home or people-as their other two companions had done months ago._

_Coran had shook his head at this suggestion. "No. He has always been that way. He never says much."_

_Okuda had inherited his taciturn nature from their mother. It had taken more than a month before Vegita and the two brothers were sufficiently emerged, each from his private place of shock and grief, to be capable of holding any sort of sustained conversation. More than a month before he learned he was traveling with two of Articha and Turna's three sons. This fact, even though both men were strangers to him, had given Vegita an inexplicable sense of gladness. Coran and Okuda's eldest brother had died early on in the war, in a Maiyosh-jin nuclear strike on the colony he was stationed on as deputy governor. It was only logic, Vegita thought solemnly, that the sons of Articha and Turna should have been too strong in body to be felled by the plague._

_"If we run across Okassama and Toussan," Coran had told him several nights past, "We will have to flee them, or risk exposing them to the virus. We may be carriers now. And if they are lured into any port in the Empire before they learn what has befallen our people-"_

_Vegita made a soft growl of disagreement. "Neither of them is gullible or slow to suspicion when things do not seem right. They will had monitored hyper light transmissions, and be on their guard."_

_"Okassama told me the full count of girls on their carrier convoy was eleven thousand," Coran murmured. "Another eleven thousand survivors-and that added to the brats in Med Center. We must hope your Lady manages to contact them before they are exposed. She has saved our entire race single-handedly with her vaccine."_

_Vegita had given both brothers an extremely edited version of his last meeting with Bulma. He had told them she had left him to die with his world at his own insistence. That neither of them had known it was possible to survive the plague. He had told Rikkuum to hold his tongue on pain of his life, though the big man seemed convinced at this point that 'Bulma-sama' could not have known Vegita could be saved._

_The truth...the truth was between Vegita and his woman alone. The truth held too much pain and sorrow, love and murderous rage, to put any words to. He could barely contemplate what he would do, what he must do, when he saw her again, much less speak of it._

_Vegita drove an elbow into Rikkuum's kidney and the giant warrior stumbled, gasping. He finished the bigger man off with a quick, brutal jab to the temple. Rikkuum fell with a reverberating, metallic crash as his armor struck the hold floor. Vegita pulled a towel off one of the wall rails, wiping his face, thinking over Coran's seemingly casual question. The power cells would last a hundred years or more, but life support and provisions would not. They were running dangerously low on water, food and oxygen. There was no longer a choice, but he would prefer not to stop until they reached their ultimate destination. It was time to tell them what he planned._

_"We will stop soon. Come."_

_Moments later, the three of them stood around a holo-projected star chart, while Coran pulled up file after file of information on every system within a week's travel from their present location._

_"This one," Coran said decisively, pointing at a binary system with two viable worlds. "It is six hours travel from our co-ordinates and doubles our chances of finding what we need. And...none of these worlds in the outer rim territories will have heard the name Saiyan. They will not attack us on sight."_

_Okuda did not speak. He simply pulled up an enlargement of a small, singe star system with one habitable satellite. It was eighteen hours travel still...less than a day. Okuda eyed Vegita questioningly, a small quirk at one corner of his mouth making him look very like his mother._

_"You knew," Vegita said. "How?"_

_Okuda shrugged. "It is in our direct line of flight. The Imperial expansion records list it as being purged, but never colonized. Each recorded purge is filed in the database with a short report by the commanding officer, giving cursory details of the battle and mop up. It is a good guess that she would go there-it is the only other world she knows." That was the most Vegita had ever heard the man say in one breath._

_Coran sat down heavily. "I am a slow-witted fool. Nine years for the dust to settle, the skies to clear. The vegetation and the sea life will have begun to rebound. It was only a flash fry purge...just enough to destroy the indigenous population, not enough the wreck the world's biosphere for re-colonization. Yes! Gods, it is a brilliant hiding place for the brats as well! It is months from the center of populated space, and who would think to search for them on a purged world!"_

_"It is not certain that we will find them there," Vegita said curtly. "But it is my best guess. If I am wrong and we find no one and nothing, there will still be fish, water and air aplenty to restock the ship. In any case, we will be there tomorrow." He was growing tired of talking, tired of even this limited interaction with Rikkuum and Articha's sons. "Do not disturb me until we are approaching orbit."_

_He made his way to his cabin and closed the door behind him._

_Chikyuu..._

_It was by no means sure that Bulma had hidden her precious cargo there, but, as he had said, it was the best guess possible. He sat down on the narrow bunk, breathing hard, trying to still the shaking of his hands. In less than twenty hours, he might very well be standing face to face with his woman._

_And then..._

_There was no honor left for him among his people. No honor in continuing to live. He should let them think him dead, a heroic martyr of legends, the savior of his people. He should die. But he could not. Not yet. His duty to his people and to her would not allow it. He must find her. He must hold her again. He must speak the three words his people did not say, the words that did no justice to all that she meant to him, to all that lay between them. And then..._

_And then, by the debt of vengeance and honor she owed him for her crimes against his people, and by the love he owed her as her mate...he would kill her. Quick and painless, as his father had commanded him, implored him to do, time and again. And in that final act of love, he would end the misery of her madness. He would end her life and his own in the same breath. His Ki was gone, but he was still sufficient master of his own body to stop his heart at will._

_And perhaps, the gods who had smiled on Bardock and Romayn would let them meet again, love again, under a happier sun._

_He lay back on his bunk, pulling his woman's med satchel, the satchel Rikkuum had taken from Med Center, up to his lap. The great, faithful oaf had snatched the entire sack of her personal effects in his hurried pilfery, knowing there was an encapsulated mini troop carrier somewhere inside, though he had no time to rummage for the one pellet that contained what he sought._

_Vegita had indulged himself with a solitary pleasure, once every ten days since this journey to nowhere began. Every ten days, he would choose one pellet, one thing that had belonged to her, and open it. It was a game he played, a thing to anticipate, as pathetic as it seemed. But it had kept him alive._

_At first, the capsules yielded nothing but medical necessities, but he quickly discovered the internal pouch that contained her personal effects. The first pellet had produced a single red rose, encased in a tiny cryo-stasis orb, frozen in the perfection of full bloom for all time. The second, ten days later, yielded a light blue summer dress that perfectly matched the color of her hair. Even clean and freshly laundered, the garment had carried her scent so strongly Vegita had destroyed it after two days. He kept waking in the night, rising out of sleep for a few blissful seconds of forgetfulness, smelling her, reaching for her...and finding himself alone._

_He took one pellet from the satchel and smiled grimly, scanning the encapsulation volume measurement to be sure the contents were not bigger than the ship itself. He had found several that had such an enormous reading he was certain they must be other ships._

_He popped the capsule, waiting as the metallic smoke cleared to reveal a small data disc. He turned it over in one hand. Music? She would frequently blast his more sensitive ears to near deafness when she thought herself alone in the villa as she worked in her workshop. She had collected a selection of rhythmic noise pollution from several dozen different cultures and worlds over the last months..._

_But she also used these discs to record her work and help order her thoughts as she moved through the steps of a medical or mechanical project. It might very well be a disc full of the sound of her voice._

_Bulma's voice..._

_He rammed the disc into the bedside computer and ran a file scan with shaking hands. It was tri-partitioned-one tiny section of audio, followed by a slightly larger section of written text. The last section of the disc went back to audio…strange. He took a deep breath and opened the first file._

_His woman's voice, sweet and so young sounding, began to speak._

Raditz gave me this data disc today. He said I could 'do whatever fool-girl thing I wanted with it.' Which is his macho, Saiyan way of saying, 'Here, darling, I brought you a baby shower gift.' This morning, we finally pulled Karot-chan out of the portable incu-pod Bardock pilfered for us. He opened his eyes, his big blue eyes, and frowned at me. He looks just like his father, except for his eyes…and he has Son-kun's hair pattern. Raditz picked him up by the scruff of the neck, counted ten fingers, ten toes, and one little brown tail.

Then he smirked and said, "You'll do just fine, brat!"

He says the baby looks completely Saiyan except for the eyes. Bardock says he can get someone to die the baby's eyes black permanently when he's a little older. So, no one will ever know he's half Chikyuu-jin. Bardock and Romayna-san have both told me at different times that this happens a lot more often than you'd think because of the twenty to one ratio of men to women among Saiyans, and in spite of their inherently violent nature, they are an instinctively monogamous race.

So it's not common, but it does happen. Warriors developing "foolish affections" for their alien courtesans-which is a pretty way of saying "pleasure slaves."

I asked Raditz if he had developed "foolish affections" for me and he humph-ed angrily and said, "No! But I am careful to appease you because I am afraid of waking with one of your bombs wired to my tail." Which is Saiyan for, "I love you, too."

Why am I recording this? I should explain that, shouldn't I? At first, I thought it might be a diary for Karot-chan to hear when he's older, so he can know the part of himself that is me, the Chikyuu-jin part. But now…I think it's more. So that some history of me, of my world, of who and what I am, will go on. And maybe one day, someone will read this, my son or one of my Saiyan great grandchildren…and maybe they'll grieve for Chikyuu and all the other purged worlds and peoples that are lost and unremembered.

I looked into Karot-chan's eyes when Radtiz set him in my arms. I thought…I had been sure he would be the one. But Kami-sama said I would _know_ Son-kun when we meet again. And my baby…isn't him.

One thing has been worrying at the back of my mind all day today, a sort of tiny dark spot in the middle of a good day. What Kami-sama said…what he said about the "long, dark road" I would have to walk. This isn't it. My world and everyone I ever knew before Vegita-sei is gone. I am not a free woman. I get desperately lonely when Raditz is gone, even with Noira and her family to talk to, and I have very little to do in the way of work or any sort of project other than my garden. I got so lonely when Raditz left on that 'mission strike' on Corsaris that I even taught that fucker Bardock to play chess. But…I'm not as sheltered as Raditz thinks I am. Romayna and the house slaves-Noira, her little girl Dusca, and her husband Hiru-have all told me how bad it could have been, how unbelievably lucky I was to be given to a man like Raditz, who loves me and thinks of me as his wife in everything but law. So, if I'm occasionally lonely and bored, if I still sit and cry some days all day for my family and my world, if I have to let Raditz be the undisputed boss in our relationship, and if I'm still sick at heart because I couldn't make him understand why I was so cold and angry after the purge of Corsaris-I know it's not as bad as it could have been. My life has a great deal of happiness as well as grief. And today… _The soft, gurgling sigh of a very young child, followed by his woman's soft, wondering laughter. _…today I'm very, very happy.

_Vegita hit the pause control on the computer. After a moment of motionless silence, he began to realize that he had stopped breathing and inhaled slowly._

_He would hear it all. From beginning to end without omission. Even if it took every waking hour from this instant to the moment they landed on Chikyuu. Even if this tale cut and gouged his heart like a razor-whip drawn through his innards. Even if he wept like a babe before the end of it. He would hear the story of her life on Vegita-sei in her own words without turning away. He owed her this debt._

_He lay back on his bunk and unpaused the disc._

If I tell you the story of how I came to Vegita-sei, maybe it'll explain my flower garden a little better.

There was a chill in the air on the morning of the last day of my world. I had just pulled a jacket out of summer storage in the attic. Momma always packed my clothes away with a potpourri of petals from her own gardens in the pockets. As I went down to breakfast, my boyfriend Yamcha called to me from his room sort of pitifully, asking if I could bring his food up to him after I ate. He had finally decided what he wanted to do with his life a few weeks ago. He had left to go train with Son-kun and Krillan under old Kame Sennin, and then broken both his legs on the first day of training. There were no ripe senzu to be had, so he was having to heal naturally. The boys brought him back to Capsule Corp. I had told him that it served him right. That he was only posing anyway, going to Kame House to train because his friends were doing it, not because he had any great commitment to be a warrior or a hero. I ignored his pleas for food and went downstairs. That was the last time I saw him. The first boy I ever kissed, my handsome, gentle, desert bandit wanna-be. Kami, I was so mean to him, not just then, but all the time. And he just took it, hunkering his shoulders down and looking hurt when I would yell at him. Poppa said once that Yamcha was a good boy, a strong, brave boy…but that he was not strong enough for the kind of woman I would become. The last thing I ever said to him was something snotty and rude. I wish…oh gods, I wish I had treated him better.

I went to my workshop and collected the little 'project' I had been working on, then went outside for some target practice. As I passed through the kitchen, Momma asked me to water her petunias while I was outside. I took the watering pot with me, but I forgot to do any watering. I wish I had. Instead, I played in the quad yard with the dogs for a little while as Momma cooked. Poppa passed by me as I began recalibrating the energy wave burst pattern on my 'project'. He had been in his own workshop all night working on something. He kissed me on the forehead as he passed by, but I was so absorbed in what I was doing I didn't look up, just mumbled, "Morning, Poppa." I never saw him or Momma again.

The instant the kitchen door closed behind my father, I heard it. The Voice in my head.

**Bulma.**

**"**Kami-sama?" I whispered, suddenly very afraid. Not of him, but because, even at seventeen, I knew that god didn't just strike up a conversation with you for no reason. Even if you had met him in person.

**Take your flyer and go alone to Kame Sennin's island. Go now. Don't go back in your house or stop to think about it.**

I remember thinking that this was the start of another adventure. I remember jumping into my flyer and gunning it into the air. And I remember how the next words he spoke killed all the happy excitement inside me. **Listen to me now, child. Time is short. Piccalo Daimo is locked in a battle he will shortly lose, and when he dies, so shall I.**

"No!-" I said.

**Be still, Bulma! And hear me. Son Gokou is slain and Kame Sennin with him. And all of Chikyuu will soon follow.**

I couldn't even react to the enormity of it for a moment. Then I began to argue with him, almost crashing the flyer as I screamed that he was a liar, that it was impossible. **It is happening**. Something in his voice, something I can't describe with words, shut me up. **Go to Kame House,** he said**. Fate will take you into its hands after you arrive. Hear me! Son Gokou's soul will return to you soon, Bulma. He will be born just as he was before, clothed in a body that is a replica of the one he wore in this life. You will know him when you see him again. My God, the Kai of Kais, has told me this- **and here, his voice became a Voice, and seemed to be doubled. I heard another, greater, Presence speaking through Kami-sama's soul into mine. **The future of this galaxy, this entire universe, will one day rest upon his shoulders. You must guide ****him to his destiny. But you will walk a long, dark road first, sweet child. I would more than anything that I could take this cup from your lips, but I cannot. Do not give way to hate and vengeance, daughter, or you will fail Son Gokou, and thus, all life everywhere. No matter what befalls you, remember your father's teachings, remember his good heart, and try to see the good that might be, rather than the evil that is. There is no soul so black that it cannot be shown the way to the light. Do not seek vengeance, Bulma Briefs, or let hate rule over you…or you will fail your charge.**

And then he was gone. Just like that. A few minutes later, I came up on Kame House and decapsulated my little 'project', something I had dreamed up as a nasty surprise for Piccalo if he ever showed his ugly green face again. I climbed out of the flyer with the rifle in hand, a hand cannon that shot an energy wave which disrupts the brain waves associated with Ki. I walked past the blasted bodies of Roshi and Oolong, past the charred wreckage of Kame House. A gust of hot air whipped my hair. To the east, just past where the sea fell away at the curve of the earth, the clouds scattered out in a ringed pattern around a huge mushroom fireball. And I knew, somehow _knew_, that Piccalo was dead, and Kami-sama with him.

Everything seemed unreal and overly bright. All I could see was the man bent over Son-kun's body, stroking his hair, his face set like a stone. I knelt down beside him and touched Son-kun's face. He was cold. "Little brother," I whispered. Bardock looked up at me and seemed to notice me for the first time.

"Who killed him?" I asked softly.

"I did," he said matter-of-factly, without any expression at all. I didn't think. I raised the cannon and fired at him, point blank. Then something hit me from behind and knocked me out cold.

I only woke once before we reached Vegita-sei. I was strapped into Bardock's space pod, sitting across his knees like a little girl on her father's lap. I looked out the port window, down on Chikyuu from orbit. The world, the whole world, was on fire. I started screaming and he put one hand over my mouth. "Hush, girl." His voice sounded almost kind, and weary to the bone. "It's all over and done." He punched a hyper wave com link. "Is everybody in formation and prepped for hyper-light?"

Replies of "Hai, Captain!" filtered through the com.

"Initiate cryo-sleep sequence," Bardock said when they'd all sounded off. "Let's go home." He sounded tired and angry and…I don't know what else. Then the cryo-gas flooded the pod and….and after what seemed like a long night's sleep, we were making planetfall on Vegita-sei. I have a woozy memory of the bone-breaking jolt when the pod landed, then nothing until I woke that night in Bardock's house.

The sounds of a fire burning and of men's voices, were all around me. I sat up from the giant throw pillow I had been lying on face down, pushing off the heavy fur blanket someone had covered me with. All the conversation around me stopped.

"Damn," one of the men said softly. I stared around at the firelit faces of the men seated around the hearthpit. A woman's cool voice broke the silence.

"You need to put your eyes back in your head if you want to keep them, Toma-kun."

They all burst into rowdy, good-natured laughter, this band of warriors who had just destroyed my whole world, everyone I'd ever known and loved. Toma flushed bright red. His mate, Celipa, only smiled sweetly and returned to demolishing her leg of cho-deer.

"Eat, girl," Bardock told me. I spat at him and swatted the plate back in his face. That sent the rest of them into another round of laughter. I wasn't thinking clearly, wasn't even really thinking sanely at this point. I jumped up and tried to run for it, but he wrapped his tail around my ankles and pulled my feet out from under me.

"What are you going to do with her, Captain?" A barrel-chested heavy set soldier asked.

Another man snickered. "Romayna'll have your balls for earbobs if you keep her."

Bardock frowned and seemed to tense up at the mention of Romayna's name. Toma caught the change in his posture and cleared his throat. "She'd fetch a king's ransom if you sell her to one of the high class courtesan merchants," he suggested casually. "Even more is you put her up on private auction block for the nobility."

"Auction?!" I screeched. The tail around my ankles tightened painfully and I broke off, gasping.

Bardock shrugged, not even glancing in my direction. "What the hell does a soldier need with money," he said. "I'm giving her to Raditz. I owe him for helping me out so much with the Tsiru-sei expedition."

The talk died down after a while, and one by one the others left for their own homes. Toma hung around until all the others were gone, glancing back from where he stood with Celipa with his hand on the door at Bardock's solemn, troubled frown. "She will understand, Captain," he said.

"Perhaps in time," Bardock told him softly. "But I must face her tomorrow, and she will…" He shook his head despairingly. "She will grieve as though she had raised him herself."

"Call me in a few days," his friend said quietly. "We will hunt drakets in the mountains."

Bardock didn't speak or move for a long time after Toma and Celipa left. I just sat their beside him. I didn't have much of a choice. "Who is Romayna?" I finally asked. He didn't answer me, just lay down on the great pillow bed we were both sitting on and promptly fell asleep. After a while, I did the same.

I woke just before dawn and sat up very, very slowly, staring down at the man asleep beside me. I reached down and gently unwrapped the tail from around my legs and stood. I might have killed him. It occurred to me that there must be something somewhere in this house that I could drive through his heart. But…his face in sleep looked so much like Son-kun's, like the man Son-kun would have grown into, I couldn't do it. _Do not give into hate._ Kami-sama's words came to me suddenly. As I stood over him, his eyes shot open, and again, I didn't think. I brought my foot down on his tail as hard as I could, turned and ran for the door instead as he shrieked behind me, curling up into a ball of agony. I tore the door open, and found myself hauled up, off my feet, by the scruff of the neck like a kitten. The tall, beautiful woman who held me strolled back into the house, carrying me, and stared down at Bardock's prone form, one corner of her mouth quirking up. She had a deep warm laugh.

"If she'd had a weapon, you'd be dead now," she told him as he sat and stood painfully, facing her. She eyed me, then him, narrowly, raising one eyebrow. "This girl-child reeks of your scent, husband."

"She's been strapped across my lap in a one man space pod for four months," Bardock grunted. "I thought I might make a gift of her to Raditz."

Romayna set me on my feet and studied me closely. The curl of her lips widened minutely. "She will give him a great deal of trouble. But Raditz was ever one for trouble. He has done nothing but brood and growl since Soi and the rest of his squad were slain. He will certainly find this one diverting."

She turned back to him, her face sobering, an unspoken question in her eyes. She was silent. He didn't say anything either. Finally, she spoke again. "Where is my second born, Bar-kun? Where is Kakarott?"

"He failed his infant purge," Bardock said. Both their faces might have been made of granite for all the emotion they showed. And I realized that this must be a cultural thing among their race, that the more something was tearing them up inside, the less they let it show on their face.

"The natives slew him?" She asked.

"No," Bardock said heavily. "He was injured, brain-damaged, after crashdown. He lost his infant conditioning and a good portion of his wits, and-"

"And you murdered him!" I screamed. "Your own son! He wasn't 'damaged', you fucking monster, he just grew up thinking he was Chikyuu-jin!"

"Does she speak the truth, beloved?" Romayna asked softly. The deep olive tint of her skin had turned almost white, her hands were clenched at her sides convulsively.

"He wasn't right in the head, woman!" Bardock said harshly, taking a step toward her, his face cold and hard, his eyes imploring, begging for forgiveness. "I swear it on my soul. He was unusually strong for a cub his age, and would have fought us to his last breath for the purge of his 'home'. He would have never made a soldier of Vegita-sei, and would have gotten himself killed in less than a day if I'd tried to bring him back!"

"Not under my care!" She said coldly. "What does a soldier's son need with a full set of brains?! He could have learned our ways. I would have trained him myself, even if you had no use for him. I would have trained him from birth if you had not made the decision for both of us to send him afield!" Her voice was like ice when she spoke the next words. "The son I lay in cryo-stasis after you left for Chikyuu is _mine!_ You shall have nothing of him hereafter. Nor of me!"

He just stood there, like he was frozen in place, and watched her leave. And that was…I think that was when the realization I hadn't wanted to acknowledge the night before as I watched Bardock and his men sit and talk like old, well-loved friends, as I saw their rough affection, their love, for each other for what it was-I think that was when it really struck me. They were Vikings. They were marauding Mongol or Cossack or Hun tribesmen. They were a hundred warlike Chikyuu-jin cultures who practiced land or sea piracy as a matter of custom and

livelihood. Violent, murderous societies and ideologies….populated by people. Not monsters. Just people. And that one realization changed everything for me, I think.

Though it didn't change what I felt for Bardock and his crew personally. I couldn't stop hating him, no matter what Kami said. I just couldn't. I stood there watching him as she left him, watching the way how much he loved her didn't show on his face, but was so evident nonetheless…and I thought _Good! I want you to die inside for what you've done, you bastard! Even if you don't know or care that it was wrong. I want you to hurt and hurt and hurt-right up to the moment I kill you. And I __**will**__ kill you, Bardock!_

I don't know how long he stood like that, immobile as a stone, but after a long time, he seemed to see me standing there, glaring at him, and he set his mouth in a grim line. "Let's get you where you're going, girl," he said.

In the midst of too many things to absorb, none of his statements about his plans for me had really sunk in, let alone the implications of what they meant. The only thing I clearly remembered at that moment was a suggestion one of Bardock's warriors had made the night before, something about an auction. So, I turned and ran from him, screaming and crying at the same time. He ran me down, cursing irritably under his breath, and put me back to sleep as he took off.

The first thing I thought when I woke was that I was getting really tired a being knocked out. I was in a bedroom, in a new place, a different Saiyan house. This house. I sat up in the big bed. My hair felt damp and clean and my clothes were folded in a neat pile beside me. An ivory-skinned woman with huge, circular shaped black eyes was sitting beside me.

"I'll stat-bag your clothes for you, child," she said softly.

"Stat-bag?" I whispered.

She took my hand and helped me out of bed. For some reason, I felt a little woozy and disoriented. Too much sleep, I thought. Four months of it, according to Bardock. I stood and looked down at myself. I was wearing a silky white, ankle length dress that flowed around me and clung to my body when I moved. _Good thing is isn't see-through, _I thought_._ Because I wasn't wearing any underwear.

"It preserves what you seal inside," the pale woman answered. While she spoke, she guided me gently to sit in a chair and began brushing the tangles out of my hair. "When my homeworld, Ansou-sei, was conquered, the Saiyans made most of my people domestic slaves. I preserved everything I was wearing the day

the cargo carrier brought me to Vegita-sei in a stat-bag. If you have your clothes particle analyzed, you can clone a little piece of your homeworld for yourself. Resurrect a plant or and animal your had contact with when you wore those clothes.

I bit my lip to keep from crying. "My…my mother put a potpourri of flower petals in my jacket," I told her. "Made from all the flowers in her garden. My Momma..." I started to cry in earnest then, and she let me and washed my face when I was done.

"We'll make your mother's flowers live again," she said gently. "We can start tomorrow. The master will not begrudge you that."

"The master?" I sniffled. Then I remembered some of what Bardock's men had said the night before. "Am I-is this a 'courtesan house'? They were talking about selling me to-to-" I was starting to get hysterical.

She shook her head firmly. "Our master is Raditz, son of Bardock. You remember Bardock, I imagine." I nodded numbly. She placed a glass of wine she must have poured even before I woke in my trembling hands. "You're a slave in the household of Raditz. I doubt you're kindly disposed toward Bardock-san, child, but he did well by you in this. With that lovely face of yours, he might have sold you to a whorehouse for a small fortune. But he gave to his son's household instead. If one must be a slave, Raditz-sama is a good, fair-minded master. He is not a cruel or temperamental man, and he does not beat us when we make mistakes. Drink your wine, love, it will calm your nerves." I drank obediently.

"He bought my family-my husband Hiru and my daughter Dusca and myself-four years ago. We are the entire domestic staff."

"I'm Bulma Briefs of…of Chikyuu." Oh gods, I was so innocent, so naïve, to ask the next question. "What….what will I do here as a slave?" _At least until I can learn to fly a spaceship and escape, _I thought.

Noira's face went carefully neutral. "Well, for the moment, you have to take dinner with the master. He'll get to know you a little, then he'll decide."

I didn't know…so many things. I didn't know that Noira was a medic as well as housemaid. I didn't know that she had been commanded to give me a thorough physical as I slept. To determine bone density and strength. To determine my age and if was even sexually mature for my race. To determine if I were a virgin or not. I didn't know that this kind-hearted woman who became my friend was sending me through the bedroom door and into the hearthroom to become her master's pleasure slave.

There was a mountain of food on the dining table, and it all smelled like ambrosia. I hadn't eaten in…if you count cryo-sleep, it had been four months.

The hearthroom seemed to be deserted, the only sound was the crackling of the fire. I didn't sit down or use a plate, I just dug into the spread and began to

eat.

"Try the wine," a man's deep voice said, and I very nearly jumped out of my skin. I saw him sitting in a chair just outside the edge of where the light from the hearthpit shone. He stood slowly and limped toward me, out of silhouette and into the light. I stood there with food in my mouth, gaping at him as he approached me.

He poured us both a glass of table wine and I took it mechanically. He was gorgeous, tall, with a warrior's full muscled body. He was like a statue carved out of bronze and olive-hued marble, with high cheekbones, and dark, arched Saiyan eyes. He looked, I thought, like a male version of Romayna.

I chugged the entire glass of wine in one gulp. "You're Bardcok's son Raditz" I said stupidly.

"I am Raditz," he agreed. He took the empty cup from my hand and filled it again, handing it back to me. I took another sip, wondering what I should do next.

"What is your name, girl?"

"Bulma. Bulma Briefs."

His raised one eyebrow, looking even more like his mother with that half-amused expression on his face. "Is it the custom of your people to stand while eating, Bulma Briefs?"

"Um…no." I sat down, feeling like…like I was somehow on a first date with a man-a grown man-who was far too old and sophisticated for me. He must have eaten already, because he only picked at his food as I wolfed mine down. He seemed surprised when I finished.

"I think Chikyuu-jin stomachs hold a lot less than Saiyan," I told him. In spite of the huge meal I'd just eaten, I felt light-headed and warm inside from all the wine. I don't remember any of the actual conversation, though I know he told me a little about Vegita-sei and the Empire. And that he emphasized how large the Empire was. At some point, he stopped the small talk and fixed me with those dark, hard eyes. "I know you are thinking already of how you might escape my household and this world. You'd be a spiritless little thing if your thoughts were not turning in that direction." His lips twitched. "And you are anything but spiritless. There is nowhere to run to, girl," he told me flatly. "And an alien woman with you face and form-" He eyed me pointedly. "If you are not someone's property, not legally under that protection of a strong Saiyan warrior, you can be taken and used by any warrior who desires you. Do you understand what I mean by that?" I nodded, feeling my stomach began to do a slow rolling somersault. "You are neither a fighter nor Saiyan, and you must be owned by someone to have any sort of protection under that law."

"That's wrong…" I whispered. I was shaking, my eyes burning with helpless anger.

"It is the world as we find it," he said implacably. "I will not shackle you or fit you with a surgically implanted tracer, Bulma. But I warn you of the world that lies beyond this house. If you are wise, you will except the protection I offer."

I didn't say anything for a few moments. Then I began to cry, and once I started, I couldn't stop. He seemed completely unsurprised by this reaction.

He put his arms around me and I clung to him as he picked me up and carried me like a child to sit on a down-stuffed animal skin directly before the hearth's rim. He held me while I cried, running his hands through my hair. And when I'd cried myself out, he listened to me tell him about Chikyuu, about my parents and friends,

about that last day, inexplicably chuckling when I told him how I'd shot his father. I think the enormity of all I had lost hadn't really hit me yet, and at some point as I sat crying in his lap, some deep, self-preserving part of me pulled back from it. It was too soon, too over-whelming, the wounds too raw to deal with yet. So, my mind just pushed it away. I wiped my eyes as my sobs tapered off slowly, and asked a question so out of the blue it shocked him.

"Are you hurt?" I asked. "You were limping when I first saw you."

He shifted me in his arms and frowned. "I am not wounded. Not truly. My squad was part of a garrison stationed on Shadras. A month ago, a terrorist movement called the Red Demons detonated the energy cells of a grounded troop carrier's engines. A side effect of the energy wave from such an explosion is that it does great neurological damage to the central nervous system of lifeforms in its path. I was healed of my bodily wounds in a regen tank, but the neural damage is slower to heal. The medics tell me I will be fully well in another month, perhaps two." His voice dropped to a rough whisper. "The rest of my squad…my companions, my lover Soi…Only one other of our number survived and he still hovers between life and death at Med Center in the Capital." He stopped talking, his face drawn and hard. I didn't know how Saiyan children are grouped into squads, almost from infancy, in a fighting unit that will remain constant throughout their lives. How squad mates are, for that reason, closer than any blood family. But I had a sense of how much they'd meant to him, and how devastating and heart-breaking the loss had been. He took another long draught of wine and raised his cup to my lips to share. His black eyes looked so sad and haunted.

"It makes you feel guilty, doesn't it?" I asked softly. My head was spinning now. The whole room was listing and my only anchor was his arms around me and those black, intense eyes. "To be the only survivor. I keep thinking 'Why me?'. Why should I have lived when everyone else is gone?"

His eyes, so close to mine now, widened, and for just a second his face looked young and vulnerable. And that's when I kissed him.

_Bulma's voice paused for a moment before she sighed softly._

He didn't hurt me. Not even a little bit. He was so slow and gentle and… I know he didn't seduce me so gently and sweetly that first time out of the kindness of his heart. He just understood women very well. And it was his personal preference that nothing is so sweet as what is freely given. He knew that if the first time was sweet and slow, it would create a bond of affection inside me that would run deeper that any set of chains. Especially in the highly vulnerable emotional state I was in. Momma always told me that you will always love your first lover a little, no matter where your life take you as you grow older. I remember his big warm hands and his lips being everywhere at once, while I lay back, holding onto him with my head spinning. It's all a pleasant blur, really.

It didn't occur to me until sometime the next day what my duties as a slave in his house would be. Gods, I was such a little girl. But after that first night, it was too late to object, even if I'd wanted to. I didn't object. He was big and warm and strong, and above all, he was something to hold onto. I held on for dear life.

And…once he'd introduced me to a little of what he knew, he opened a floodgate of appetite inside me. Over that first year, he taught me everything, every way he knew that a man and a woman could please each other. And by day…he was kind to me. I don't think I realized this until a few months ago, but two things changed our relationship into something much more than it might have been. My question and my words about survivor's guilt struck him a lot deeper than I knew, and, I think, opened up a chink in his emotional armor that a slave and an alien would never have been able to penetrate. And if I was vulnerable, so was he, in his own way. We had both just lost the people closest to us in our lives, and that, coupled with the next two months he spent on medical leave, with no one but me for company, created something much deeper than the off hand affection he might have felt for me otherwise.

After he fully recuperated and went back on active duty, he was around a lot less, flying home between shifts of duty and on his days off. He spoiled me like a father with a favorite child, bringing me gifts from all corners of the Empire. Heh…it sounds strange, but in an odd way, he was sort of a father to me at first. He was more than twenty years my senior, I found out, though he looked to be in his early twenties by Chikyuu-jin standards. So maybe…maybe I didn't let myself be owned so much as I let him take care of me until I grew up a little more.

That's what I tell myself anyway.

I've decided that breast feeding isn't all it's cracked up to be, especially when your baby is already demonstrating Saiyan strength when his dinner is about to be pulled away from him before he's full. You're going on the bottle, starting today, buster. _A high, gurgle was the only reply she received._ Where was I in my life's story when I stopped last time? Oh, I remember. Well…things sort of went into a pattern of his comings and goings, while Noira's family and I ran the house. She seemed scandalized that I wanted to do any work at all. I gave her a look and told her that sex with a skilled lover wasn't my idea of hard work, and I needed something to do or I'd go nuts. The one sticking point with Raditz, one he's never given way on no matter how I cajole or wheedle, is that I can't have a lab or a workshop to build…well, anything. I'm sure Bardock told him about my

Ki-zapper, but the reality of my abilities didn't impress itself on him until he actually took a long look at some of the domestic gadgets I threw together in the first couple of months. He shook his head and said, "No more, Bulma."

I pitched something just short of a tantrum until Noira explained to me that if anyone ever saw what I was capable of, I'd be confiscated and put to work in the Capital as a slave engineer for the Crown. "During the day, anyway," she finished darkly. "You have heard enough of Romayna-san's tales to know that you would not be left alone to do your work. I think you know by now how very lucky you are in Raditz. Do you want to be taken from him and used like a whore by other men?"

I could have argued that no one was going to ever see my machines, because no one ever came to the damn house other than Raditz' one remaining squad brother and his parents. But I just slumped in defeat and nodded obediently. I wonder if a big part of me, the wild, defiant part of me that always seemed so close to the surface when I was on Chikyuu, sort of…died for a while. That I was sort of a muted version of my real self at first, until I began to recover from the blow of losing so much. Well…it didn't mute itself with Bardock, that's for sure.

During my first year on Vegita-sei, I tried in deadly earnest to kill Raditz' father no less than 13 times. Every single time he came to visit, in other words. He seemed to visit a lot more since Romaya had put him aside, Raditz told me once with a troubled frown. He never said it outright, but his parents' estrangement bothered him a great deal. He didn't, however, have any trouble with my multiple attempts on his father's life. Someone please explain that to me.

I failed every goddam time. Granted, Raditz' house is rustic and almost bare of technical appliances, but I made do with what I could find. Actually, I think some of the things I came up with were pretty damn ingenious considering what I had to work with. Raditz found the whole thing funny, and in fact, I think I finally gave up on the murder attempts more to keep the whole pack of them from laughing at me. Bardock's entire squad found the idea of their Captain being wounded by me to be a source of never-ending amuzement.

Romayna-san…she comes by less often that Bardock, but I enjoy her visits. I wasn't sure of what to make of her when she visited the house the first time and strolled into my garden, still in her armor. She had asked for assignment offworld right after she learned of Son-kun's death, and was on a two day layover on Vegita-se at the time.

"These are flowers from your world?" She asked me without any sort of introduction.

"Yes," I said, eyeing her curiously. The only other Saiyan woman I'd ever seen was Bardock's squad sister Celipa, who was small and deceptively delicate looking. Romayna was nearly as tall as Raditz, but she was very feminine

at the same time, and very beautiful. As beautiful as her son was handsome.

"Tell me about my second born, girl," she said softly, sitting down. "Tell me about Kakarott."

I told her everything, all that had happened on that last day, even the things Kami-sama had told me. She shook her head. "I am sure stranger things have happened, but I cannot believe it without more proof. When you believe he has returned to you, I will come to see him and make my own decision."

I learned, as I got to know her, why she was so different from most Saiyan women in her maternal instincts. The people of the Turrasht mountains are a breed apart, more steeped in the truly ancient ways of Vegita-sei than any customs that have sprung up since they became a space faring race.

"The old way," she told me, "was to cast all cubs into the wilderness at six months and let them forage for themselves. If they survived a year on their own, they were taken back into the tribe and trained as warriors by their parents. This weeded out the weak and sickly, and kept out people strong as a race. But this…this pandemic ideology of tossing our children away like rubbish, to be trained by strangers, is a custom of the Great Northern Tribes, who's strongest son became our first worldwide king after the Tsiru-jin invasion a thousand years ago.

They were a harder people than the tribes of Turrasht, and their customs have overborne all others since the first Vegita came to the throne. We in the South keep our ideas to ourselves for the most part-but we keep them, nonetheless."

And so my life went for the better part of three years. A little better each year, a little more in love with Raditz than in need of him. Until Corsaris. Karrot-can…he was born as a direct result of-no. Let me back up and tell the whole story.

Eleven months ago, Raditz came to me while Noira, Dusca and I were pruning and watering in the garden. He dismissed them with a look and kissed me hard, lifting me off my feet, pressed so tightly against his body I almost couldn't breathe.

"What-?" I finally managed to gasp.

"I have been granted to right to lead an attack on the primary base world of the Red Demons," he said intently. "Kyouka and I petitioned the Prince himself for the honor because we are the only two survivors of the sneak attack on Shadras. But it will be a hard fight. The Maiyosh-jin rebels are strong. They are not a warrior race by nature, but we have known since the purge of Maiyosh Prime that they can fight like mad dire cats when cornered. If I should fall-"

"You won't die!" I screamed in his face, and he blinked, truly startled. I had never raised my voice to him, not like this, in all the time he'd owned me. "Don't say 'if'. You won't die!" I was crying now, and he carried me to our bed without another word.

He made love to me all afternoon and into the evening, sometimes sweet and gentle, sometimes almost violently, and we didn't speak again until dawn. One last time, we moved together and then he-then he put his mark on me, driving his teeth into my shoulder as he came, and for one brief instant I could feel everything he felt for me, how much he loved me, flow inside me with his seed. I knew what it meant that he had done this, and I also knew it was something that was not done, even among third class warriors and their alien mistresses. And Raditz…he had been pigeon-holed as second class at birth, but he'd requested re-evaluation as a young man. He was a first class warrior, the highest rank a man of common birth could ever hope to achieve.

"Raditz…" I whispered. I couldn't catch my breath as he lay over me, every inch of his huge frame trembling.

"Shhh…" He spoke against my lips. "You have been mine since the day you

came to me, but now I am yours as well. Custom forbids it, but there are no written laws. As long as we are discreet." He kissed me again. "I have asked my father to stay here while I am gone-" He felt me tense against his body. "I have willed you and all my household to my mother in the event of my death, but she is stationed on Arbatzu now. Toussan would care for you until her tour of duty of was over. He will see you are safe, should any ill befalls me," one corner of his mouth curled up, "so try not to kill him while I am gone."

"You're not going to die!" I whispered fiercely. "It won't happen."

He'd left me dozens of times, on scores of battle missions, in the past three years, and though he'd never given me any details (and I didn't want to know them), I knew that the enemies he had fought had never been sufficient to give him

so much as a run for his money. So, I'd never worried about him dying, or what my fate would be in the aftermath of such a catastrophe.

"Peace, beloved," he said softly, and in spite of everything, something leapt inside of me at the sound of that word. Beloved. A Saiyan word, used without exception, only between husband and wife. "I would be a poor protector if I did not make sure of your safety should the worst happen. I cannot tell you where we are going, but our plan of attack is sound. The danger is not great, it is simply…

present."

I waited with my heart in my throat. No word came from the hyper light news feeds, nothing for more than a week. I could see from the grim set of worry on Bardock's face that this was an ominous sign. I tried to keep busy. Noira and I unpotted the cherry tree saplings I'd kept under my heat lamps all winter and began planting them in what would be my orchard a few dozen meters from the house. Noira and Hiru gaped like baited fish when Bardock offered to help. By that time, I was so frantic with worry, I didn't even object or remember to be nasty to him whenever we ran into each other around the house. Saiyans have no familial love my ass! I'll loathe him til the day I die, but those horrible days of not knowing convinced me that Bardock did love his son-his _oldest_ son, anyway.

On the tenth day of this hell of waiting, word came. Bardock dragged me out of bed to come listen to the hyper light wave transmission, a detailed report of the battle. The target had been Corsaris.

Corsaris…

The last seat of parliamentary monarchy and relative freedom in the galaxy. The Lord Regent had held off enslavement beneath the Empire's heels for thirty years by providing a tithe of its rich grains and water supplies-until Imperial Intelligence discovered that Prince Jeiyce of Maiyosh, old Lord Corsaris' foster son, was in fact the leader of the Red Demons. Until it was learned that that the docile-seeming world was harbor to some 60 thousand Maiyosh-jin supporters of the "terrorist movement" and their families.

And their families…

Raditz had been right. The Maiyosh-jin fought like cornered dragons when they realized their backs were to the wall. And they discovered, only after drop, that Corsaris had not been home to merely sixty thousand Maiyosh-jin-the numbers were closer to six hundred thousand. All of them righteously pissed. Raditz lost most of his primary assault unit in half and hour and ended up fighting back to back with his squad brother Kyouka for his life. Meanwhile, ships full of refugees packed into anything with the means to achieve orbit were launching all around them. Then, the Saiyan backup force-a twelve pack of giant troop carriers-dropped their legions onto the planet. It was still a pitched battle for a while, but Raditz marshaled an organized attack. After five hours of fighting, the Saiyans won the day.

After that…they didn't just purge the world. They made an example of it and anyone not lucky enough to escape during the first assault. It's not…it's not the nature of Saiyan warriors to do what they did that day on Corsaris. Saiyans kill without mercy or remorse, but they always kill quickly. Jeiyce of Maiyosh was not on Corsaris when the attack came. Raditz later learned that he'd missed the Red Prince's departure by a matter of two hours. Jeiyce was not there-but his family was.

At some point during the purge, old Lord Corsaris was killed, torn limb from limb with deliberate slowness. At some point, Jeiyce's little son Jehan was killed, tossed from soldier to soldier, screaming his poor little heart out while they laughed, breaking all his bones before they finally crushed his head against a stone wall. And at some point, Raditz himself drug Jeiyce's wife Lady Jula out into the midst of the slaughter and gave her to his men. And after she watched them kill her son, they raped her to death.

Raditz was wounded badly during the first part of the battle, though he kept on fighting. Bardock offered to take me to Med Center to see him. I said no. I wondered around in a frozen daze, the field reporter's words praising "the righteous, fiery vengeance for Arbatsu" ringing in my head over and over. Bardock watched me closely, probably sensing how very, very close I was to bolting.

Then Raditz came home. I saw him fly home from where I stood pouring tree nutrient in the orchard. I didn't go to meet him.

The…the hardest thing to accept was that he truly did not understand why I was angry. No...not angry. Sick and grief-wracked and half crazy with horror at what he had done. I tried to explain it to him when I finally calmed down enough to speak to him. I knew how much he had loved his squad brothers, all of whom had been killed by Jeiyce and his men. I tried so hard to make him understand.

I wish I could say that my coldness lasted until he saw what he'd done was horrific, until he wept as though his heart would crack for all the innocent people he'd murdered. But he never understood, and considered my anger an insult to his slain squad brothers. It seemed to him I was saying he had no right to avenge them. And my coldness…it only lasted a few months.

He left after that scene in the orchard, cold and angry himself, and hurt more deeply than I realized. He took some sort of assignment in the Capital, until I "got my fool head back on straight" and I didn't see him for three months. Not until Romayna came to spend her furlow in our house and saw the secret I had been keeping.

"Raditz does not know," she stated simply. She sensed the baby growing inside me instantly. "I..." I put my hands together in a protective pose over my stomach, suddenly terrified. "Romayna-san, please...please!"  
She had always been kind to me in her gruff, proud way, had always treated me like a person...but I still backed away from her with a shriek as she advanced on me. I knew the laws. I knew that what I carried was a death sentence for her son as well as me if it ever became known. She gently but firmly held me in place while she lay a hand over my no longer flat stomach, her face unreadable. Then she grinned, a full Saiyan smirk.

"He is strong, your firstborn." Her eyes met mine. "Male to female, our race is nearly thirty to one, girl. This happens more often than you would think. If he looks Saiyan, he may be quietly acknowledged as Raditz's son. It is not common knowledge, but even a DNA scan cannot distinguish between a half-blood and full blood Saiyan. Our blood is so strong it overbears that of other peoples when we mix with them. If he bears your face, his fortunes will be less prosperous and his tail will have to be removed. It is an old law that half breeds must die, but..." She shrugged. "One cannot be called to accounts if a crime is never known." She frowned at me with mild displeasure before going on. "Think well on how you will greet my son when he returns to you. He has given you more than most men in his position would ever consider. Even to the point of letting you, his legal property, turn him out of his own house and bed. Has it never crossed your mind once how lucky you are in him?"

She told Raditz of course. And he came running home, just as she'd known he would. And I...I took him back. I...

I should hate him for the things he did on Corsaris...but oh gods, I can't! Not just because he's a man who loves me and is good to me, not just because of Kami-sama's warning against hatred. But because there wasn't just me to consider now. If my coldness finally managed to turn him against me-it was my baby's life that I was putting at risk as well as my own.

He was ecstatic about the baby. I don't know what Romayna told him, but he came home like a penitent prodigal, as though he had seen the truth in my accusations, and I received him with a warm, "I'm sorry for being so unreasonable" embrace. But it was all a pose, on both our parts. He knew I needed him now, that I had no choice but to open my arms and take the love he offered. The love and the protection. He had me over a barrel and we both knew it.

When he came to our bed that night, he…he took me. Took everything that was his, with a kind of controlled ferocity, again and again. At the end, he collapsed on top of me with a deep, contented sigh. He knew I'd never turn him away again. The baby would keep me obedient and loving and at his side for the rest of my life. He loves me. I don't doubt that. But…he also means to keep me…and I think, at least initially, the biggest part of his happiness over the baby was knowing that now…now he could keep me forever.

"You are mine, beloved," he whispered, just before he fell asleep.

"Yes," I agreed softly. "I am."

He was too fast asleep to feel me shaking beneath him. I cried the rest of the night.

Contrary to the novels of high romance my mother was so fond of reading, you cannot "mourn in sorrow all your days" over anything. There is too much good, too much joy in simply being alive, in every single day, to dwell constantly on all the things your life _isn't_. Especially when you're pregnant. Raditz took an extended leave using the clout of his new promotion to field marshal after Corsaris, and hovered over me until he nearly drove me out of my mind. He wasn't used to the day to day rhythms of the house, and at first, he just got underfoot. All six feet ten of him. Noira and Hiru nearly died of shock one morning when they saw him sitting beside me in the garden, awkwardly potting a handful of pansies.

Things between us got easier after a few weeks of having him back. Then they got comfortable. And by my third trimester, it was good again...mostly because I had asserted some level of equality in our relationship by that time. We lived together, except for his increasingly frequent trips to the Capital. We worked on the house and gardens. At night, we sat before the fire and talked, his hand caressing my tummy, feeling in fascination how the life inside me grew stronger every day. It was good, as I said, after things came to a head over Noira and her family around the fifth month of my pregnancy.

He wanted to kill Noira, Hiru and Dusca, at first. I could see the knowledge that they knew about the baby become a tangible, gnawing worry in his eyes as I began to show. I could also see that he had decided, almost as soon as he returned home, that he would take care of the potential threat in a final, permanent, Saiyan fashion. The only question in his mind was whether he would do it before or after the baby's birth, since we would need Noira when it came time to remove the baby and place him in the incu-pod Bardock misappropriated from Med Center for us.

"Don't do it," I told him in a flat cold voice across the dinner table.

He didn't have to ask what I meant. He shook his head very slowly. "They will be a threat to you, the boy and myself as long as they live. They have been good, loyal servants, but-Bulma, think! They could blackmail us, or simply expose us, with a word!"

"They won't," I said. I stood and walked over to his chair, leaning down nose to nose with him. "Listen to me, Raditz," I said, almost in a whisper. "Noira, Hiru and Dusca have been my friends since I came to you. They are good, kind-hearted people and I love them. They won't betray us. If you are nervous about having them around, use some of the fortune in spoils you took from Corsaris and give them a ship and their freedom. I love you, Raditz." I had never said it before, and he looked startled and somewhat unnerved. He 'humphed' and looked away uncomfortably, but I took his cheek in one hand and turned his face back to mine. "Do you love me, Raditz?"

"Bulma-" His face had reddened with a mix of anger and embarrassment.

"Just nod your head 'yes' if you do," I said softly, refusing to be cowed by his thunderous expression.

Jaw clenched furiously, he nodded once and looked away again with an angry growl. "Then don't do anything to hurt them. You'll kill everything I feel for you if you do."

He met my eyes for a long, hard moment and I didn't flinch under that black, intense stare. Then he took my face in his hand and pulled me down to meet his lips. "You," he said softly, "have grown from girl to woman while I was not looking." And he smiled.

Everything was better after that. Noira told me covertly that Raditz had given her a terse command to bone up on medical texts concerning late pregnancy incu-pod transfers and C-section surgery. Nothing more was said of the matter, and the rest of my pregnancy went fairly smoothly.

Raditz began to come and go with a great deal of frequency during my last trimester, never giving me any sort of satisfactory answer when I asked where he had been. Bardock finally told me that Raditz had been formally presented at court by the Prince himself in honor for his "heroics" on Corsaris. That explained why he hadn't mentioned what was still a touchy, raw subject we never discussed. The Saiyan no Ouji, the Heir to the throne of the Empire, had officially taken Raditz into his circle of Royal Companions, Bardock said. The Crown Prince's own personal squad.

"It is something unheard of," Bardock said with a frown. "He has said nothing to you because he came to the Prince's notice in the same way he came into his new wealth and rank-by his victory on Corsaris. But also…" Bardock's frown deepened.

"What?" I prodded, staring down at the chessboard between us without really seeing it.

"He has risen higher in rank than many highborn warriors deem seemly," Bardock growled. "You remember the news feed reports during the battle, girl! The victory on Corsaris was very nearly a loss. Raditz turned the tide of a pitched battle with cunning, bravery and level headed iron will. It made him a hero. A famous one. It brought him to the notice of the Prince who has now befriended him. He is the son of a back country, common born squad captain. Can you imagine how many enemies his sudden rise in station, not to mention the Heir's regard, has earned him among the Elites?"

"It is a double-edged sword I am holding," Raditz told me that night, after roundly cursing his father for a tell-all. "I did not seek fame or court life, but I cannot snub it without giving offense. I did not seek Vegita-ouji's company, but a man cannot refuse a Prince's offer of friendship." He swore softly. "And now I am trapped. I must come and go as he bids me, fight at his side, laugh at his jokes, and spurn the my true squad brother Kyouka and even my lowborn parents

to keep company with a pack of-" He stopped himself before he said something seditious. "If it were the Prince alone, it would be great fun, but all the others who surround him-it is like a nest of vipers, all vying for his regard."

"And the perverse thing," I said thoughtfully. "Is that he probably gives you more attention because you don't want anything from him-all the others do. Maybe he wants a friend who doesn't kiss his ass."

Raditz snickered. "There you are wrong. He likes it kissed well and frequently. He's of an age with you, but still very much a boy. A boy who must always have his way."

Noira took the baby in a scarless C-section about a month ago. She and Raditz both assured me in no uncertain terms that I would probably not survive a natural birth, and Raditz told me we weren't going to wait and find out. I've spent the last five weeks staring at him through the glass of his pod, watching him sleep and suck his thumb. I was a little sad that I couldn't see anything of me in his face-until I held him. Until he opened his eyes and stared up at me…his bright blue eyes.

_There followed a series of seemingly never-ending entries, all revolving around the child, her garden and Raditz-in that order, it seemed. Vegita began to drift off in a light doze, lulled by the sound of her sweet voice-until a note of mild panic in her words brought him back to full wakefulness._

We're having guests tonight. As in right now! Shhh…shhh, sweetie, it's just a storm… It's okay. _The boy's warbling cries quieted beneath the sound of distant thunder. _The storm's clearing up already, and they'll be here any minute. Raditz just called and told us to "get ready". I don't think he had much choice in the act of "inviting" his guests tonight. There's no time to move the baby, he said, but there is no reason to worry. No one will see him. He told me to stay out of sight with Kakarott and everything will be fine. Kami…they're here. I have to go.

Fighting, blah-blah. Now, _that _was a great battle, blah-blah. Murder and mayhem, blah-dee-blah-blah. The conversation downstairs has been frightening and dull at the same time. I don't know why I'm so interested, except they're the first new people I've seen in five years. Their voices have gotten softer and a bit slurred in the last hour. I think they're all plastered, my dear mate included, but it's getting interesting now. They're drunk enough to be honest with each other.

Hmm….the deep, velvety young man's voice must be the Prince, because they all defer to him. He's saying something about "no strong enemies left to fight." Like a young Alexander, mourning that there was no more world left to conquer. More like Alexander's heir, if he'd had one. It must be hard to grow up in the shadow of a father who conquered the whole damn galaxy. Nothing left but punitive subjugation purges and the boring beaurocracy of running an Empire. I wonder if he-Oh, Kami!

Shit. Shitshitshit! I have to remind myself to explain at a more appropriate time the concept of Murphy's Law. Fuck!

I know I closed the window! Somehow, Karot-chan got outside and crawled over the edge of the cliffside on the northern face of the house. I don't know how it happened. I crawled out after him and found him stuck on a rocky overhang ten meters below the drop-off, crying for Momma to help him. I got halfway down to him and nearly fell myself before Raditz swooped down and picked is both up with an angry curse. He was angrier and more frightened than I'd ever seen him, but he calmed down a little too quickly when I explained what had happened. I think I know why, too. He left the damn window open!

All's well that ends well, I guess. But there's one last thing to tell. Something more than a little frightening. Raditz' guests must have seen him bring us back inside through the garden courtyard, though they didn't see the baby, thank the gods. As I went back to our rooms through the kitchens, I found Noira and Hiru prepping breakfast for the men in the hearthroom, pulling an all-nighter in case a guest needed the least little thing in the wee hours. Noira saw me and put one finger to her lips. I stopped beside her, just behind the servants' kitchen entrance, listening. They were talking about me. Like men discussing and admiring a prize winning show dog or a thoroughbred filly. I went to our rooms and crawled into bed with Karot-chan beside me. That's where I am now.

Kami…I am lucky. So very, very lucky, to have fallen by chance into Raditz's hands. And not into the hands of one of those men downstairs.

Oh Kami…I left Karot-chan with Noira and went downstairs this afternoon like an idiot. Raditz had said they would be gone by daybreak. He was wrong. I didn't realize I was singing out loud until I heard the hearthroom doors creak behind me and-

_A slamming noise cut off her words, the sound of booted heels striding across the floor._

"He put his hands on you!" _Raditz voice hissed harshly, sounding muffled, as though his face were buried in her hair._

"I'm okay," _she said, but her voice trembled slightly._ "I haven't been pawed since I was in high school, but it's not fatal. It's okay…it's over."

"It is not," _Raditz rasped_. "He has asked me to sell you to him. Commanded me, more like-Bulma!" _She had made some kind of horrified moan._ "He will not have you! He will not come for you for a week. There is time to-to think of some plan. I-I can perhaps make him believe you've died by some accident or that you have run away. I will think of something! I-" _There was a long silence, broken only by the sound of Bulma's soft sobs._ "He…he will not believe me. He will kill me and tear through every friend I have to find you. I know him too well now. There is nothing and no one he will not rend to have what he wishes when he is in this humor. It is my fault! I left the fool window open, thinking the boy could do with some fresh air! I-" _The sound, fevered and desperate, of his lips on hers._

_And in spite of everything, Vegita felt his hands clench in jealous, black rage._ "I will think of something, beloved. He will not have you! He will not!"

Hi. It's been several days since my last entry and it's a gross understatement to say that a lot has happened. Raditz came up with a plan all right. We're leaving Vegita-sei tonight. As soon as Hiru gets back with the full med lab he's heisting from Med Center in the Capital. As soon as Raditz finishes priming our ship's engines." _A soft, plaintive child's whimper._ "Shh, baby. On top of everything else that's happening, Karot-chan is teething. Raditz bought the ship from his squad brother, his _real _squad brother, Kyouka, no questions asked. Noira is putting Dusca to bed in one of the ship's two cabins, and Raditz is in the engine room, having a minor nervous breakdown. He was a lot worse before Hiru told him he used to be a freighter pilot on Ansou-sei and can plot a hyper light jump. I think Raditz is thinks he can memorize the flight manual in the next hour. We don't know how long we'll be traveling. To the edge of Imperial space and beyond, so it'll probably be months before we stop running.

Raditz hasn't told his parents what we're doing so as not to implicate them in his defection, but I'm terrified of what the Prince might do to them out of spite, and Kyouka as well, since he knows the three of them are Raditz' closest friends.

Raditz says he'll send a direct communication to his them as soon as we're away, and they can decide whether to lie low or ride Vegita-ouji's royal tantrum out and hope for the best. Raditz…gods.

He's giving up his world, his friends, his family, his rank and wealth-

All to keep me.

All to save me.

I don't know which of those two desires is stronger in him now, but…I love him for it. I don't just need him anymore. I love him. _A little silence, punctuated by the baby's soft, drowsy breath. Her voice fell to lighter than a whisper._

I promised absolute honesty in this diary, didn't I? Yes, I did…

The first thing I thought when I saw the Prince of Vegita-sei standing in my garden, looking me up and down, those cruel black eyes burning over my body with this…this raw, brutal, animal lust…the _first_ thing I thought, even before I thought "Asshole!" was…was "beautiful".

Beautiful.

And wild and dangerous and wicked and- _She broke off and released a trembling little sigh._ Absolute honesty, right? When he put his hands on me, I was outraged and terrified…but my whole body seemed to catch fire. And I could imagine him having me in the darkest hour of the night, our sweating bodies moving together toward this super nova of a climax and-

Damn…

He saw it. He felt me react to him. And I think…I think it's all my fault this is happening.

But this is not a bad thing in the long run, is it? Or even in the short run. My husband-and he really will be my husband after we launch, not just my owner who loves me-is leaving to wholesale murder business forever. My baby won't be trained to be a cold-blooded killing machine. And I'll be free. So…so what's bad about that? Not a damn thing.

After tonight, everything changes. My life begins again.

Come on, Karot-chan. Let's go outside and watch for Jisan Hiru.

_The audio file clicked off, and the bedside comp beeped, signaling a change in file format. Of course. The next section would be nothing but text. Nearly a year's worth of Silenced text. Vegita sat and pulled the terminal screen into his lap with mechanical slowness. He would listen. And he would read. Every word, without omission. It was part and parcel to his blood debt. He hit the execute command and read._

I will kill him. He's going to die. I will. I will I

Raditz is dead my baby is dead. My baby is dead my baby baby my abay m

A monster tore him out of my arms and crushed him. He cried when it happened he hurt

my baby hurt

Am I dreaming? I can't wake up. I dreamed a memory of how Karot-chan kicked when I was carrying him. I've been asleep since it happened.

It was like a car wreck. It happened too fast, without any warning or ceremony, the way catastrophe always blindsides you

they caught us

The evil prince and the monster when I was little momma told me princes killed monsters

I never saw wher they came from. The giant grabbed me and lifted me up in the air. He was laughing. Then he pulled Karot-chan away from me and made this noise of disgust when he saw it was a baby. My baby is dead

He killed him like he was slapping a bug and just tossed him away like a piece of garbage. A heard someone shout at him angrily. The giant dropped me when the Prince attacked him. I don' t know why he attacked him. I could see Raditz lying dead on the the ship's boarding ramp. I crawled over to Karot-chan and tried to wake him up. After a minute or two I decided he must be sleeping very soundly so I began to sing him his lullaby the song Momma always sang to me. Someone asked me a question and I remember looking up just once to tell the Saiyan no Ouji to hush. Not to wake my baby. Then I went to sleep. I don't remember closing my eyes.

It's later. I am on some serious drugs right now.

While I was asleep, the Voice that had spoken to me behind Kami's voice spoke to me again, He told me to be strong. He told me my long dark road had come for me at last.

I told Him to fuck Himself and give me back my baby.

I came back from catatonia-land screaming. The staff medic gave me a shot so I wouldn't wreck the place and myself. The house slaves here told me I'm in the Prince's summer house, somewhere in the Western Sea. I had this diary in the waist pouch I was wearing when they caught us. So, I thought I'd do something besides sit and rock back and forth. The drug has helped that, though it hasn't impeded my motor reflexes. It's helped me keep in mind that there'll be time enough for a complete mental breakdown after I've escaped.

Noira and Dusca were still in the ship when we were attacked, and Hiru hadn't returned yet. I have to find out what happened to them and take them with me when I leave. I've only had Hiru's four day crash course in space ship piloting, but at this point, I don't give a damn.

But I have something to do first. Prince Vegita will be arriving shortly, the housemaids just told me. I can't speak. That's why I'm writing this, or trying to. The medic gave me some kind of vocal muscle relaxant and I can't make so much as a peep. I asked him why and he lowered his eyes and looked away. I think I can guess why.

I have dismantled several choice machines around the estate while I've been waiting for his highness to arrive. I've jury rigged a reasonable duplicate of my

Ki-zapper, the same energy wave I used to plug Bardock back on Chikyuu. The energy wave that disrupts the brain centers where a warrior's Ki resides. Vegita no Ouji is going to get the shock of his life when he arrives. Then he's going to get his fucking throat slit.

It didn't work it didn't kill him he was too strong. He was so strong.

I'm escaping today. I'll swim to the mainland if I have to. I'll be gone before he comes back this evening.

I know now why they Silenced me

He caught me in less than an hour he brought me back to his summe hous back to his bedd

M baby is dead Raditz is dead my baby is dead I am dead and this is hell

Its been a few days I don't know how many mor e than 3 I think. I'll try again to get away today

I can do this! The Ki rupturing theory is sound, I proved that when I shot Bardock. I just need a bigger power source and a narrower energy funnel for a more intensified burst. There's not shit to work with on this island!

Failed again, but only partially. I took his energy down to the point where I was able to stab halfway through his shoulder with nothing more than a steel fire poker. I've made the mistake of not taking into the account inherent Saiyan physical strength. The energy wave has got to be utterly debilitating to work on someone as strong as him. But I'm encouraged. It didn't stop him, but he finished up a lot sooner and had to stagger off to Scopa before he bled to death. Scopa, gods love him, told him he should spend the rest of the night in the regen tank, which is good, because the murder attempts seem to just turn him on more. Before he left me tonight, he leaned down and kissed me in the Saiyan way, nipping my lip with his teeth.

"Dangerous woman," he said softly.

The housemaids are twin sisters named Batha and Caddi. They're both Anousei-jin, like Noira and Hiru. Scopa is the staff medic and he's a Madrani. The twins asked me this morning not to use any more of their culinary appliances. I already fragged their juicer and the smaller micro oven. They're worried I'll leave them with nothing to cook with, and Batha finally told me bluntly that if his meals aren't ready when he arrives in the evening, they can both pretty much kiss their asses goodbye. I won't take anything else from the kitchens. Besides, there's still Scopa's surgery.

Still no success. I had something really promising, but the "test subject" is one fast son of a bitch and I think he realized that the new prototype was an improvement on the one that got him stabbed last time. So, he squashed it. It's been several days. Scopa says it's been several days, anyway. I sort of lost count at some point. I haven't tried a royal execution of an escape in a while. I think I've spent the last couple of days sitting and staring. I don't really remember. I want my baby. I want my momma. I have to focus on killing him and not slip away like that. If I do, I may never come back. But I still fight him. I guess I'll die fighting him one of these nights.

I've stopped eating. I can't keep anything down, so Scopa gave me a sedative laced with some kind of cannabis-like herb that inhibits the regurgitation reflex. He's not supposed to do that unless my health is in danger, but he says I've lost too much weight. The Prince doesn't want my senses dulled, Batha says. Not while he's breaking me. Breaking me. I guess like you break a horse to ride.

Wow, this is a good sedative.

Batha and Caddi help Scopa put me in the regen tank every morning. They're all nice. I told them they should escape with me, that we could all get away together.

The first morning after, the twins held my hands and caressed my face while Scopa set my shoulder, my collar bone, and my ribs and put my hip joint back in its socket. They cleaned me up while Scopa set the bones in my wrists. The tank makes everything, flesh and bone, as good as new, but it can't set bones. Batha told me she and her sister were garrison whores when they were young girls, used by common squad soldiers, one after the other. They survived. She told me I can survive.

She said I am very lucky as pleasure slaves go, to have only ever had one master at a time. I began laughing hysterically, even though I couldn't make a sound.

That first night, I kept thinking it wasn't happening. Right up to the instant he shoved himself inside me. I kept thinking I could make it stop. I couldn't make it stop. I couldn't make it not happen. He was on top of me, and then he was inside me and all over me and I couldn't get away or even scream for him to stop. And as soon as he finished, he was ready again. It went on all night. And his face…it was never angry or cruel, just excited and really turned on. He was smiling half the time, like a boy with a new toy or pet he had wanted for a long time. That's worse than if he hated me and meant to torture me. I'm just a pet he's training to obey. If he hated me, at least I'd be a person to him.

Batha told me two days ago to stop fighting him. She said he's hurting me so badly because he's trying to break my spirit.

"And it time," she said. "He will. He'll wear you down until your mind and your will buckles and breaks, child. Then you'll be his 'doll'. That's what we used to call the pleasure slaves who broke completely. A 'doll'. A Saiyan's walking talking love slave, who lives to please him. I've seen some of them even kill themselves out of heartbreak when their masters were killed in battle or set them aside for a younger girl."

"I can't!" I signed to her. Batha and her sister had taught me Silence, the signing language of Vegita-sei courtesans. "He killed my baby. He killed Raditz. All to have me! I can't let him have me! It would be like spitting on my family's graves!" I had just come out of the tank and I was woozy and light-headed. I always have to sleep an hour after the tank drain out to fully recuperate. She shook her head as she helped me into bed.

"I'm sorry about your baby," she said, tucking me in. "I cannot grieve for the man who butchered Corsaris, but the boy's death must be hard to bear." She was trying to sound sympathetic, but I could see something in her eyes, something cold and murderous that must have been born inside her during her years as a garrison whore, that told me she would have had no moral problem with strangling a half Saiyan baby in its cradle-just because it was half Saiyan.

"Raditz loved me," I told her, sleepily.

"I suppose he did," she murmured, "though I have never heard of such a thing. I never met a Saiyan warrior who was not a violent beast."

Raditz was a man, I wanted to tell her. But I knew she'd never understand or want to. They're all just men. It would be easier if they were monsters, but they're not. They're just bad people.

She stroked my forehead the way my mother always used to when I was feverish. "If you want revenge, Bulma….submit to him. He is young and you are the first pleasure slave he has ever taken into his household. He has born a great deal of his father's and his people's displeasure to have you-which is a sign that he is fairly obsessed with you already. Give in to him. Please him. In a month or two, he will have to move back to the Capital or risk angering his father even more. By that time, girl, you could be manipulating the little bastard to do anything you ask of him. Do you want to kill him, child? Do you want a chance to kill Lord Nappa, the one who killed your son?"

"Yes!" I mouthed. I would have screamed it if I could.

"You will have access to all the tech supplies you need when we return to the Capital," she said softly. "I'll get them for you if it costs me my life. You can perfect that little weapon that almost gave a girl with no readable Ki at all the means to kill the strongest warrior on this planet. You can use it to kill that great brute Nappa and even the Prince in due time. Fighting him when he comes to you is futile, child. Believe me, I know. But there are other ways of fighting."

I ran.

I could see the logic in her words but I couldn't do it. I just couldn't!

I found the rusted out hull of a sea skiff below the cliffs on the western edge of the island, rewired it, and took off without waiting to see if it was air or sea-worthy. It turned out to be neither. I went into the drink about five minutes toward the mainland, and then remembered why Scopa had warned me not to try swimming. They call them sea shrikes-they're kind of a cross between a shark and an aquatic wolverine. I remember horror movies when I was little where the camera pov showed the open maw of a killer shark ready to swallow the victim whole. And I thought…I thought, it's not so bad. Being fish food. It'll be over quickly.

He showed up in the last second and saved me.

I was shaking all over from adrenaline, from the sensation of having mentally embraced death for those few seconds. Accepted it with a warm smile of welcome. Then having been rudely jerked back into the hell of living.

"Why?" I asked him silently. "Why couldn't you just let me die?" I was crying a little bit. I hadn't let him see me cry in a long time.

He touched my face then and smoothed the hair out of my eyes. "I do not want you to die," he said quietly. Then he looked forward, away from me, and snorted angrily.

And oh gods, I recognized that look, that combination of mannerisms. Raditz had always done the same thing when his feelings for me embarrassed him. And I knew Batha had been right when she told me I could be running him in a month or two if I wanted.

It was a way to find Noira and her family, to find out what had happened to Romayna and Kyouka and even Bardock. And I knew I'd never get at Nappa except through the little bastard who was even now sneaking a peek down at my face, trying to read my thoughts.

So…I just collapsed against him. And he smiled down at me, his expression a sickening mix of smug triumph and gentleness. He thought he'd beaten me at last.

When we got back to the summer house, I thought, I'll just lie back and let him have me. And maybe if I don't fight, he won't hurt me so badly. But he wasn't satisfied with just using my body. He pulled off my clothes slowly, his hands, his mouth, his body working mine against its will. When I realized what was happening, that after all these weeks of brutal rape, he meant to make me feel pleasure, I nearly broke and began fighting him again. But I didn't. I held still and let him do everything he wanted.

And I discovered that there are much worse things than tearing, bone-splitting rape. There is pleasure under the hands of a man who has murdered my family and savaged me like an animal every night for two months. He took his time.

He was gentle and thorough and skilled and he rang every bell I had to ring. It was just as it had been that first day in my garden. My body caught fire under his touch. And when I locked my legs around his waist and moved with him, when I came that first time with him inside me, I felt my sanity tilt on its axis and nearly fracture into a million pieces. I know he thought he was being kind to me. Giving me pleasure as a reward for "behaving" now that he had what he wanted from me. But…it was worse, much worse, than having him rip me apart night after night.

I woke this morning just before dawn, and for the first time since he took me for his own, I wasn't a bleeding broken mess. Just a little sore here and there. His arm was looped around me, his body curled behind me in a lover's embrace. He was smiling in his sleep, a cat-and-canary smile of utter contentment. I dove back down into sleep, away from reality and away from him. And in the dreamscape,

I saw Raditz' ghost with a hole through his heart, holding Karot-chan's dead body in his arms. He bared his teeth at me and spoke one sentence.

"Whore!" He said. "It is all you fault!"

He was right. He was right. If I hadn't given the Prince that flash of heat when he touched me, none of this would have happened and my family would still be alive.

I woke with a jolt and found myself alone. The height of the sun said it was nearly noon. I got up and ran out of the house in nothing but my skin, tearing as fast as I could toward the cliffs on the western face of the island. I would have jumped if Scopa hadn't tackled me. Batha and Caddi came running up behind us.

"Don't do it, love!" Scopa told me. He was crying, cradling me in his arms while I struggled and clawed, trying to get away, to the sweet blessed night that

would greet me at the bottom of the cliffs. "Don't! Don't let him beat you. There's life beyond this, I swear there is. You just have to hold on and not let him win. If you give up, he's beaten you!"

I went limp in his arms a few seconds later after he gave me another forbidden sedative. I could hear them talking around me, but their voices seemed to be coming through a hollow pipe.

"…have to tell her now," Batha was saying angrily.

"It can wait until later," Scopa snapped.

"It can't wait and you know it," Batha told him in her cold voice. "If nothing else, it'll give her incentive to stay alive until her mind is stronger. Tell her, boy!"

"Bulma," he said softly. "Can you understand me?" I nodded. "We three-Batha, Caddi and myself-are charged with caring for you while the Prince is away. If you die in our care, for any reason, he will kill us all. And…there is a slave law you should know. If one slave in a given household escapes, all the others are put to death."

The last nails in the coffin of all my hope. I can't escape. I can't even die. So, here I lie, waiting for my master to return. I am a whore. I am the Saiyan no Ouji's obedient whore. My road….my long, dark road….

Fuck despair.

It's three hours since I wrote last. The twins came into my bedroom a while ago and sat on either side of me. Then they literally gave me a reason to live.

"I want you to hear all that I am about to tell you before you consider what to do next," Batha said. "We want you to build your Ki disrupting weapon. We want you to perfect it. We've just received confirmation that if you'll be given any materials you need as soon as we return to the Capital."

I sat there stunned for a few seconds, then signed one word. "Underground?"

Batha smiled slowly and nodded. "There is a quiet revolution brewing, my dear. You can be part of it if you want. I'm not wrong in thinking you want to join us, am I?"

I began to cry and hugged her, nodding furiously.

"We'll set things up for you to begin as soon as we return to the Capital," Batha said. "The less you know for the moment, the better. But in the meantime…the Network wishes to ask a more difficult task of you. This is what we were originally commanded to ask of you, before we learned of your technical talents.

I know you wish to kill the Prince and Nappa. Based on what I have seen you achieve with lamps and kitchen appliances, I am willing to say that once back in the Capital, you will be more than capable of achieving both their deaths quickly.

We-our superiors in the Network-wish you to stay your hand. At least where the Prince is concerned. We do not want Vegita-ouji dead. We want him alive and well and sitting on his father's throne as soon as possible."

"Why?" I mouthed, fascinated in spite of myself. This was starting to sound like a spy movie.

Batha grinned. "Vegita-ou is cold and brilliant and ruthless. He does not make mistakes or take one step in any direction without first thinking it through. As kings go, he's a great man. He has led his people to conquer the entire explored galaxy. But the boy? He's young, green, impatient, hot-headed and spoiled rotten.

Now, if Poppa were to have a nasty accident sometime during the next year, _and_ if open, galaxy wide rebellion were to break out at almost the same time-Well, a young prince, no matter how strong, who thinks with his cock and his Ki, is very likely to make stupid mistakes and lead his people to defeat in all out war. So…let him live, my dear. Please him, flatter him, obey him, learn his moods, his habits-wrap him as tightly around your finger as you can manage. You may think that your face and body are a curse, child, but they can be powerful weapons. Learn everything you can about the doings of the Royal Council, especially planned purge strikes. The boy sits on his father's right hand every day. Or he did until the scandal involving you and Raditz. He will be back in his father's good graces soon

enough. The old monster dotes on the boy to distraction. If you can let us know about a punitive strike action in advance, you can prevent another Corsaris from happening!"

I said yes. Of course I said yes.

First thing tomorrow, after he leaves to go Ki blast puppies and bunnies, or whatever the hell he does when he trains, I'll start drawing up a list of materials I'll need.

"I understand why I can't begin building seriously until we go back to the Capital," I told the twins, "But I the need some tech journals-no, a pile of tech journals. I want to learn as much as I can about the technologies available to me. Is there any way you could your hands on something like that?" Kami, the learning and sciences of several thousands worlds, the whole damn Empire-I'm salivating, just thinking about it! Batha gave me a generalized technical encyclopedia disc from the Royal College of Engineers' Library in the Capital.

She said she had lifted it from Scopa's tiny disc library in his little surgery.

"Just for orientation," she said with a grin at my bright-eyed, eager smile as I almost tore the disc out of her hands. "We'll get you more when you're done with this one."

My brain feels flabby. It's been so long since I read an engineering journal or built anything. This wealth of knowledge, pirated from all the worlds in the Empire, is overwhelming! I'll finish this disc tomorrow, but I already have some ideas, in addition to the Ki-zapper-I need to think up a more dignified name for it-that could potentially help a people with little or no fighting power, worlds like Chikyuu, stand a fighting chance against a purge strike. The Ki-zapper will give worlds like Corsaris an edge when they finally stand up together and fight for their freedom. But how many worlds will end up purged, or just caught and burned in the cross fire, when the rebellion begins? How many children like Jeiyce of Maiyosh's son, like my son, will be butchered for their fathers' deeds before it's over?

Kami-sama's words about not giving in to hate came back to me again while I sat in the sun this afternoon, devouring the encyclopedia whole. I think I know what the caution meant now. He was warning me not to let go of my heart. Not to become cold and driven and full of a cause because there's nothing left in my heart but hate. Like Batha.

Some of the ideas that flitted through my head, just on this first cursory reading of a generalized introduction to all the technology I have at my disposal now…some of the ideas that began to come to me were terrifying. The ideas of things I could build, some of them nightmarish in their sheer simplicity, monstrous creations of mass destruction-they can never, must never, see the light of day.

It's not just the old Briefs family genius at work here either. The Madrani are the only race who have even touched on the possibilities of machines over fighting power. The entire known galaxy has never even really explored the thought of world crushing machines, of pin-point hyper light compressed lazer cannons that could blow a sun to atoms from light years away, of- You get the point. This galactic civilization has, for time out of mind, relied almost solely on the fighting power of soldiers to fight battles. So, no one has ever really thought long or hard about the possibilities of using machines to battle for you. But…the Chikyuu-jin mind doesn't work that way. I could make a machine to collapse a planet from its core outward. I could build a cannon to kill a star from ten light years away.

This has got to be what Kami meant. That I must not let the hate inside me for all that has happened to me drive me to build such machines. I will not be an Oppenheimer. I will remember that Son-kun is coming back and will need me, that the gods themselves entrusted me to care for him when he comes. I will build defensive weapons only.

The Idrali-jin science of light and life force refraction in volume twenty of the disc gave me a great idea though. For a kind of invisibility engine to hide the children and families of the rebels. So no more men like Jeiyce will have to lose what matters most to them in the galaxy as punishment for standing up for what's right.

Before they left me, Batha told me one more thing. Scopa is not Red Network and can know nothing about any of this. He would not turn them in, but he's a devout pacifist, and would never join us. And anyone, slave or free, who learns the identity of a Network operative must be killed. No exceptions. Batha said that this sort of ruthless secrecy is the only way the Network can survive. I swore on Karot-chan's soul to keep the Network's secrets. I don't like it, and I would stop them if they tried to kill Scopa, but…they're the only game in town, so to speak. It didn't occur to me until after they had left me that the logical progression of that policy of cell secrecy meant that if I had rejected their offer they would have killed me, too.

I will live. I have something to live for again, while I wait for Son-kun to arrive. It's hard, very hard, not to hate the gods for what they've let me suffer.

And I know my dark road is nowhere near at its end. I want to make sure that, in my lifetime, no one will ever again have to suffer the kind of things I've suffered.

And I will.

It's been four weeks since my last entry. I've been busy. Scopa's let me download disc after disc from his surgery's high speed connection to the Imperial Library. I told him I was the daughter of a mastertech trade house on my homeworld, and that the tech manuals and journals are my idea of the epitome of entertainment in reading material. He was so pleased to see me smiling and taking an interest in anything, he said to download whatever I want. Gods, he's such a sweet trusting man. Batha didn't believe I was going through the journals so quickly. I don't know why. It's not like I've got anything else to do all damn day but study.

It's scary how any situation, no matter how horrific, can settle into a pattern a daily routine. I wake up each morning-sometimes I get woken up for a quickie or two before he flies to the mainland. Scopa comes in as soon as he hears the Prince leave for the day and checks me out, making the necessary repairs when needed. These days, I usually don't need anything more extensive than a bone sauter for a rib or two, and a tissue knitter for bruises. Most of the time, I don't even need the bone sauter. I want him to teach me how to use it on myself.

When that's out of the way, I eat breakfast with Scopa and the twins. Then I sit out on the rocky beach and study until he returns in the evening. Scopa usually comes out and joins me at noon and brings us a little picnic lunch. He can read lips, so I don't have to type out or sign our conversations. We eat and we talk about a little of everything, our childhoods, our lost homeworlds. Madran was destroyed when he was three years old. He's been a slave his entire life.

Yesterday, he was supposed to give me a booster injection for the Silencing.

He asked me if I hate him and I was honestly surprised.

"I Silenced you," he said softly. His amber face was twisted up in anguish, and I realized this had been eating him alive inside. "I patched you up every morning so he could have the pleasure of breaking you again that night. I still do. If he had commanded me, I would have had to-to give you a _susaji_ juice aphrodisiac or even-even—" I stopped him with a hand on his arm.

"If you had refused, he would have killed you," I said silently.

"I am a coward," he whispered. "It is no excuse to do evil or abet evil and say, 'I was commanded to do these things on pain of my life.' It is no excuse! I have betrayed all I ever held sacred to save my own life. I have spent my entire life in Med Center, Bulma. I was trained as a trauma surgeon. I have never been asked, in all my years as a slave of the Empire, to do anything other than heal the wounded and tend the unborn. When…when the Prince brought you to this island, he commanded medical admin to send him their best physician…"

"And they sent you," I finished for him.

"I thought he wanted me as his personal staff medic…for himself," Scopa said dully. "He has a well known tendency to train dangerously. I felt honored. When I arrived here, he led me to where you sat and I saw that you were in some kind of deep withdrawal shock. He told me to wake you and prep you for-for his use. I gave you a series of gentle shock stims to pull you out of the shock. Then I sedated you after you woke and Silenced you, and…and just left you for him to-to-" His breath caught in a soft sob. "I could not have taken you to safety, because it would have meant Batha and Caddi's lives, but I should have done _something!_ I should have died before I did as he asked. It was the first true test of whatever moral fiber I have and I was too frightened to do anything!" He was kneeling beside me on the blanket we always used as a picnic spread as he spoke.

Slowly, he put his face and palms to the ground before me in a pose of such utter submission, I choked on tears myself. "I beg you…I beg you, forgive me. I will not compromise what I know to be right again. I will not give you the Silencing injection, even if it means my life."

My hand was shaking a little when I took the hypo from his hand gently and pressed it into my own arm. I took his shoulders and pulled him up slowly to face me. "If it wears off, he will kill you," I said. "And I won't let you die on my account. I don't blame you, Scopa. Please don't blame yourself. It's not your fault. It's mine. All of this is my fault." Something in the way I smiled at him made him pale with worry. For just a second or two, I saw myself through his eyes and recoiled a bit. The fragile, haunted, too-thin girl mirrored in his dark eyes looked like she was stumbling along a precipice of madness. She in no way resembled the woman with a cause I believed I had become. She was in no way as 'okay' as I thought I was.

"It is his fault, Bulma!" He said, reaching out and shaking me lightly. "His! Raditz' death, your son's death, the way he has used you-it is his fault, not yours!

How are you at fault? Because you are beautiful? That is the ravisher's excuse since time began and it is a lie!"

I couldn't tell him about the garden. I couldn't make him see that I knew I had invited the Prince to take me when he touched me that first time. Some things are too shameful to ever tell another living soul. And if I'd told him the whole truth, Scopa's gentle heart would have tried to grant me some kind of absolution for my sin. I don't want any. I know I deserve everything that he's done to me.

Batha and Caddi are nice to me, but I've had time to realize they watched the Prince use me night after night with a kind of cold calculation behind their sympathy and comfort, knowing that if I survived the initial 'breaking', their cause would have a loyal, devout new recruit, strategically placed in the Crown Prince's own bed. Their cause, our cause, is right, but…

Batha is, beneath the kind, smiling mask she showed me as first, ruthless and agate-hearted. Caddi is a study in introversion, silent, never meeting my eyes…but under that stoop-shouldered, broken pose is a woman as dedicated to her purpose as her sister. On some profound level they've subverted their hearts and morality to achieve their ends.

Scopa is not a freedom fighter. He's just a good man trying to live in evil times and do the right thing. And he's my friend. Oh Kami, it's so good to have a friend again.

We moved back to the Capital yesterday. He has a surprisingly low key villa in the hills, overlooking the huge city. We loaded up the flyer everyone had somehow kept hidden from me during the weeks of my escape attempts and flew across the sound. As I watched Scopa and the twins load their few personal possessions and the mini-surgery, I could have kicked myself for not thinking of capsulization technology sooner. It had nearly innumerable uses to a hunted rebel force that needed to travel quick and light. I drew up full design plans, the nuts and bolts on up, from memory while we flew and gave the data chip to Batha.

"Give that to your cell leader," I told her. "And after they've built it and tested it, tell them there's a hell of a lot more where that came from. I've included a wish list of supplies and materials I'll need to get started on the Ki-gun. But I've got to have some sort of lab to give them anything more complex."

"You'll get it," she said emphatically.

I spent the next few hours reading out on the stone deck that faced the hill country, listening to the distant roars of ships launching and descending at the space port on the western edge of the Capital along the coast. Leaving

Vegita-sei…

I am trapped. If I leave, I cause the deaths of everyone else in the household. If I die, same thing. If I kill him…

I asked Scopa what would happen if I made it look like an accident. He went pale and shook his head. "No, Bulma. Even if you succeed, you can't be certain there would be no suspicions. The tiniest suspicion would be enough to get you torn apart by the Inquisitors. And the King would take out his grief on every slave on Vegita-sei."

So, I can't kill him. I knew that anyway, it's just a pleasant daydream. Not yet, Batha told me. I understand why he needs to stay alive. Why he's worth more to the Red Demons alive than dead. So, I'll bide my time. But Nappa…he's a different matter altogether.

Last night, the Prince introduced me to _susaji _juice. Scopa didn't mix it for him, he brought it home fermented into a bottle of expensive goldberry wine.

It tasted like honey mead on my tongue, and he watched me as I obediently drank the full glass he's poured me, those black eyes glittering with expectation. I thought it was only wine, his idea of a 'home-coming' toast. When I finished the glass, he left me sitting at the dining table and moved over to stoke the embers of the hearthpit, a small smile on his lips. I followed him, wondering what new game this was and what I should do. He sat down after a moment in a big blackwood armchair and I knelt down before him. He smiled again as he ran a hand through my hair, like a man petting a lap dog. I took the hand in mine and drew it down my face, smiling myself, picturing him impaled on a bed of knives while I removed his guts with a dull scalpel. He didn't say anything or make a move on me. I knew why, or thought I did.

It hadn't taken him long to start demanding that I do more than just submit and respond to his advances. After a while, he began to want me to make the first move. To do things to him, rather than just lie down and comply. I played dumb in this, pretending that I had very little in the way of advanced skills in this area. He believed it of course, and even made some nasty comment about low class warriors like Raditz having little idea of how to please of woman. I jumped on him and began pummeling him with my bare fists when he said that, screaming soundlessly that Raditz had been twice his size, in every sense of the word, and had never hurt me once. He thought the bare-handed attack was hilarious, but the idea of me rebelling against him because of his slander toward Raditz made him angry.

"You need a reminder of how things were and could be again if you do not behave yourself, woman," he hissed. He hurt me badly that night. He only stopped when he realized he'd broken my spine and I was dying.

But on the whole, he seemed pleased that I appeared to be sexually unsophisticated. He believed he was teaching me as we went along.

I kissed the thin skin over his wrist, imagining it slit open, is life's blood pouring out. I put both hands on his knees, moving my body between them, sliding my hands up his thighs, preparing to give him a lengthy and thorough blow job. Each moment it took meant another moment he would not be inside me, making me come, making hate myself and all the gods in creation for giving me over to this nightmare. He always makes me come, again and again, but always hurts me, too-he has every night, except that first night when I gave in. He's skilled in what he does, but at some point, he always loses his control and either cracks a bone or tears me up inside by going too hard and too fast. On a good night, if I'm lucky, he'll hurt me at the end of the night rather than at the beginning. If it's at the beginning, I'm SOL, because once he starts, he won't stop. He may think the writhing in agony under him is me getting off, but in the end, he really doesn't give a damn. Though he did growl at me angrily once when I stopped moving with him because of the pain.

"Are you getting bored, woman?!" He snarled. Then he increased his pace and strength and hurt me worse for having stopped,

That's a long way of explaining why blow jobs have become my specialty. I began kissing my way up his thigh, but he stopped me with a gentle push, shaking his head. "You do not want me yet," he said. "Not truly."

_No-fucking-duh!_ I thought. I sat back with my legs tucked beneath me, wondering what the hell he wanted from me now. Then the _susaji_ juice began to kick in. It was like going mad with an insatiable craving in the space of an instant.

It was like starving and smelling roasting beef right in front of you, like dying and coming upon a pool of cold clean icy water. Only what I needed, what I was starving for, was sex. My blood felt like it was boiling, as though every nerve in my body had been teased to the brink of a thunderous climax that has yet to come.

I felt like an addict shrieking for a fix. I leapt on him, ready to tear his clothes off and have him in the most animal way imaginable. There was no sense, no thought, no hate-just need. He pushed me back gently a few more times, smirking now, then got up and strolled leisurely into the bedroom. I followed him, clinging to him, the desire inside me growing to a kind of burning internal pressure. He stripped and lay down on the bed, but he didn't have me for a long time. Not until I groveled and begged him with silent words and tears. He let me beg for a long time. Finally, he chuckled affectionately and opened his arms to me. I jumped into them, sobbing with relief, and we went at it like wild animals in heat until dawn.

I woke this morning, unhurt. Uninjured. I must have been so pumped up with adrenaline that I was nearly a match for him. If he gives me the juice again, I think-no, I'm sure-that my mind will just snap in half like a twig. I'll go out to lunch permanently and not come back.

If I have a choice, I'd rather he hurt me every single time. Anything is better than wanting him like I did last night. And the way he made me beg was worse than all the rapes combined.

I have a lab and a workshop. The twins took my capsule plans to whoever they take stuff to, then all the way up the chain of command to the Red Prince himself, who apparently nearly wet himself in excitement over the possibilities of encapsulation technology. They've brought me everything I asked for over the last couple of months, smuggling tools and supplies in baskets of laundry and market sacks. Scopa is always up and out of the house my midmorning, as soon as he's finished patching me up on the days I need it. The Prince gave him permission to work at Med Center during the day, though he's always on call for me, or if the Prince hurts himself while training-which he does frequently, I've learned.

Scopa always returns through the servant's kitchen entrance well after dark, so he's never around to have to hide my work from. I don't know ho

Sorry about that. He came home for a lunch hour quickie. Damn. I have to be more careful with this journal. The twins sure as hell don't know about it. They'd destroy it and probably kill me as well. Make it look like I killed myself. It would mean their lives and Scopa's as well, but since we've returned to the Capital, I've seen, a little more all the time, just how little they value even their own lives where the Network is concerned. I know it's absolute madness to keep this diary now. But I need it desperately. It's a memory of Karot-chan, so it won't be forgotten that he lived and that I loved him, even when I'm dead. It's a place I can tell all my secrets, pour out all my pain. I can't speak, but here I have a voice. Even if I could speak, I might never be able to tell anyone the things I've lived through. Here I can. And it's a release to right down what I'm surviving, even if no one ever reads it. I think in the very real way, this diary is keeping me from coming unglued.

I found out today what happened to Noira and her family. Scopa found Hiru.

He's working out of Med Center as a ferry ship pilot. He's alive. Noira and Duska are dead. Vegita blasted the ship to pieces with them inside after he killed Raditz, beat the hell out of Nappa, and knocked me out. I don't suppose he knew or cared that there was a woman and a little girl inside. Why should he? They were less than nothing to him. I sat and rocked back and forth, wishing I could make myself cry for them all day, a year and a day. But I couldn't cry. I can't remember how long it's been since I cried. Caddi came and sat down beside me with her knitting. She is such a quiet person, letting Batha do all the talking and thinking for both of them…or at least I thought so.

She told me in her whispery voice that Hiru was the one who betrayed us. That Nappa had known or suspected Raditz was planning something and caught Hiru as he left the Capital. They tortured him and he didn't break, but when Nappa told him he would spare his family's life if he told…he spilled his guts. Caddi says she's known this for a while, but that he had begged her not to say anything out of shame. Because he sold out Raditz and myself to save his wife and child. I don't know how to feel about him, now. Caddi and Scopa both told me Hiru is horribly scarred from whatever Nappa did to him. Physically disfigured and this silent, blank-faced ghost of the soft-voiced, smiling man I knew. How can I hate him? If they'd offered me the same choice, as much as I loved Noira and her family, I would have chosen my family's lives first. How can I blame him for doing the same? I told her to tell him Scopa had found him for me. That I didn't hate him. That I grieved for Noira and Duska, and wished him well. She said she would tell him. She also told me that he is "one of us." Hiru's Red Network now, too.

I can't write anymore and I can't work today. I have to be able to smile when he comes home in about an hour. Two more deaths you owe me, Saiyan no Ouji.

I doubt you even remember killing them. But I won't forget. And I'll pay you back for them a thousand fold before I'm done.

It's been a while, I know. Too much to do, too many things I have to get finished as quick as I can. Learning about Noira and Duska brought it home to me that every day I take to finish my this project, more people die. It's winter now, and bitterly, deathly cold. Vegita-sei is such a world of extremes, killing winters and drought-ridden summers. It's even colder here in the north than the Turrasht winters, and that's saying a hell of a lot. It's also Midwinter Festival time, so the bastard is usually out partying until well after midnight-which gives me more time to work. Midwinter is a big thing here, a kind of blood soaked Mardi Gras, where in Turrasht ii only involved inviting your friends to drink and eat and sing old war songs off key at the top of your lungs at your house until you all passed out. Bardock was the only one of the whole tone death pack of them who could carry a tune.

Vegita bought me a fur-lined gown, something I'm actually pleased to have. It's a welcome exchange from all the gauzy, frippy, see-through crap he's given me. In addition to all his other faults, he has lousy taste in fashion. I wear all the stuff he gives me once to please him, the toss it in the incinerator if he doesn't destroy it first when he tears it off of me. I'm getting close to finishing the Ki-gun.

I'll need to field test it soon. I want to test it on Nappa. I asked Batha about this, and she said she would see what could be arranged. Gods, I can't wait! The gun has a two-fold setting. The first is the energy wave that fractures the target's Ki, the second shot is a high concentration mini blaster cannon. In other words, the second shot splatters the target's brains all over the wall behind him, since he now has no Ki shield to protect him.

I was wrong about the _susaju_ juice. He's given it to me three times since I wrote last. My mind didn't snap. I just wished it had.

Four weeks since I wrote last. I'm not being very faithful, but I literally have no time. I threw the invisibility shield together in an hour when I began on the project, but it took longer to figure out how it might be extended to cover an entire planet and to rig it with a morphic hologram camouflage that can also give a ghost image of an utterly unpopulated world on demand. So, it can be used to hide completely from the visible spectrum or to camouflage something to look innocuous, or like something else entirely. Three separate settings. I hit a snag on the Ki-gun and turned to the camp-shield project to let the problems percolate in my head. And I found that the camo-shield was so simple in construction it only took two days to draw up. I gave the plans to Batha yesterday and told her to give them to her superiors to be tested and replicated. I also reminded her of my 'fee' for this.

It occurred to me only a couple of days ago that I am an amazing commodity to the Network. That I am in a position to ask for something back. I want off this world. I told her to tell her bosses that this is only a fraction of what I could produce if I were free…on a rebel base somewhere, without the distraction of having to whore for the Saiyan no Ouji.

"If they move you," she said, "that's it for Caddi and myself."

I gaped at her. "They could take you too," I said, flustered.

"They will not," she said coolly. "Our lives aren't worth risking exposure for. If we disappear without a trace, there will be questions. Even if something could be worked out, will you abandon Scopa to his fate, Bulma? He is not Red Network and can, under no circumstances, be taken. And if you escape, his life is forfeit."

I told her to give the designs to her boss and tell him I want to meet. I told her I won't except anything less than the five of us leaving Vegita-sei together. Scopa and Hiru included. She told me stiffly that she thanks me, but that she would stay, perhaps in deep cover…I asked her why. She said she wants to be on Vegita-sei and see them all die when the revolution finally storms the Saiyan homeworld. She wants to be here to see it.

I can't judge her. I think my hates are just as great, only more centralized, directed at people rather than an entire race. I don't hate Romayna. I didn't hate Raditz or Kyouka or Toma and Celipa's little girl Anyan. Bardock and his squad are another matter, but that's because of what they've done, not what they were born.

I didn't explain about my lab, did I? It's in the unused, empty guest room.

I decapsulate the whole damn workshop room inside the guest room when I go to work. I go in after he leaves for the day, or after I come out of the tank after a bad night. Batha and Caddi keep watch in case he comes back unexpectedly. If they see him flying in, they beep me, and I encapsulate the whole damn shop. We do a drill for speed almost every day. The thought of building the things I'm creating right under his nose is a very pleasant one.

No word from the twins cell leader yet. It's been two weeks since I gave them the invisibility technology. It's been a bad two weeks. A bad month really. Vegita's people are a people who prize personal honor highly, and the murder of Raditz over something as trivial as a whore has angered a great many of the nobles.

Good for them. They've apparently been giving him hell about it in a number of subtle ways at all these parties he's been attending all winter.

Guess who he takes it out on? Not with beatings, I wouldn't survive that. He could kill me with one half-hearted punch. He's just been really rough, using me harder because he's frustrated and angry. The effect is pretty much the same though. I'm spending almost every morning in the tank. It's strange, how he's never actually hit me. You would think he'd be the sort, wouldn't you? Caddi gave me a long, over-intellectualized explanation for this, and for why the Elites are so angry over the death of a man they were all viciously jealous of a year ago.

They have no laws against murder, because the stronger warrior has every right to kill the weaker. But the murderer must take into account that there will be a settling of accounts with the squad siblings and family of whoever he murders. This is Vegita-sei's way of instructing their young Prince that you can't get away with behaving dishonorably and suffer no repercussions.

As for the fact that he's never slugged me-she said he never will. It's dishonorable to strike a weakling with your fists as though he or she were a match for you. You only strike another warrior with your fists. You might Ki-blast weaklings or swat them out of your way, but you don't beat them.

Just as there are no laws against murder, there are no laws against rape either.

Romayna told me that a long time ago. Same attitude toward rape as murder. If you're strong, it won't happen to you. If you wish to have another warrior and you're stronger than her, it's your right, but you better be sure you're a match for her friends and family if they come after you. The whole issue of rape is sort of muddled in the Saiyan psyche, Caddi said. Their natural mating instincts and rituals are all violent. The difference is that Saiyan women like being taken violently when they're in heat-and generally when they're not in heat. Their culture worships strength so much that being overpowered by your suitor is a turn on to them. When Saiyan's mix with other races sexually, they know intellectually that what they're doing is forcible rape, but their instincts and ingrained behavior say other wise.

"Are you making an apology for them?" I asked her coldly.

She shook her head mildly. "Just trying to make you see that they are what they are, child." She looked me straight in the eye, something she hardly ever does to anyone, even her sister. "They are beasts, Bulma-chan. One and all. The sooner you stop thinking of them as individuals with souls and hearts, the better off you'll be. Your Radtiz killed whole worlds of people, my dear. They can be kind when it suits them, but the truest representation of what they are is the Oozau form. A mad, murderous beast. You are a good-hearted girl, and I do not wish you to fall into the trap of thinking you can change even one of them. They are what they are."

I got up and left the house. I couldn't think of an argument to her words, though I knew they were wrong. I did something I've never done. I went for a walk through the hills behind the house. It was bitterly cold, and my cheeks were still chapped from a morning spent in the regen tank. I don't know how long I walked, but at some point, I looked up as a tiny speck flying over me, so high in the sky I could barely make it out, wheeled sharply and made a b-line for me.

He landed so hard beside me, he drove the soft earth up in divots under his boots.

"Bardock…" I whispered. I felt faint.

He just stared at me without speaking, taking in the changes in me, the hollow eyes, the flushed pallor of the regen tank's aftermath. His face was like a blank rock, but his eyes were full of…of so much sorrow. "How is it with you, girl?" He asked me softly.

"Pretty bad," I said. I didn't know what to say to him.

"I am glad you live," he said after a moment's silence.

"I'm not," I choked on all the memories the sight of his face, just his presence, were calling up. I sank down to my knees, turning my head away from him, suffocating in a burning wave of shame, that his son and grandson were dead, but I lived and served their murderer as his whore. I could feel the hardy, thick grass beneath my fingers. It was strong to survive such harsh winters here in the north. He was kneeling before me, shaking my shoulders lightly. I looked up at him, still dry-eyed. I had not cried in a long time, not even when I learned about Noira and Duska. I realized with a dull kind of horror that I had stopped crying altogether, months ago.

"I will take you away now," he said harshly. He began to scoop me up in his arms and I screamed for him to stop. "I'll finish what Raditz started and take you off this world!"

"You can't," I cried. "If I escape or die, he'll kill all the other slaves in the household!"

"I don't give a damn about the other slaves in his household, girl!" Bardock growled.

"I do!" I said implacably. "And can't, _I won't_, live with the shame of having been the reason they died! I can't-I can't kill them the way I-I-k-killed Raditz and Karot-chan!" My voice had risen to a scream, and he shook me so hard my teeth rattled. Then he pulled me forward, nose to nose with him, his face so bleak and furious I nearly screamed again.

"Who destroyed Chikyuu?" He snarled softly.

"Y-you," I whispered.

"And who do you hate for the sake of your dead world?"

"You!" I said in a stronger voice.

"Who killed your man and your son?" He asked harshly.

"Vegita," I spat.

"And who is to blame for their deaths? Who slew them, girl?!"

"Vegita!" I screamed. "Vegita! Vegita! Vegita!"

"Vegita," he agreed softly. "Not you."

I stared into his face, seeing Chikyuu burning beneath us from his space pod, seeing again how Son-kun's face had been a mirror of his father's, remembering how Karot-chan's hair had flared out in the exact same pattern as his grandfather's… And I began to cry. All that had been locked up inside me for…months, came pouring out as I wailed against his chest. "I hate you, Bardock…I hate you, I hate you…" But the meaning of what I said had nothing to do with the words.

"I burned their bodies together," he told me when I had finally quieted down. I was so exhausted from the release, I was nearly asleep in his arms. "On the pyre stone atop the highest peek in Turrasht." I sighed softly and began to cry again, softer this time.

"Live," he told me, after another long space of time. "Live if you can. He will tire of you eventually. When he casts you aside, I will take you as mine. I swore to Raditz that I would care for you if he were slain. The oath binds me still. I will free you, or keep you safe on my estate. Whatever you wish. I will give you another son if you wish it." There was nothing remotely sexual in what he meant by that offer. He doesn't think of me that way. He thinks of me…he thinks of me as his daughter. I hate him. I'll always hate him. But somewhere along the line, at some point, he became family…grandfather of my flesh and blood. I couldn't tell him that I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Vegita would never let me go. Never. I'll be free of him one day-of that I have no doubt. But only when one of us, Vegita or myself, has killed the other.

"I have to go back," I told him softly. I stood and he rose from where he'd knelt holding me for what might have been hours. "If anyone sees us, you'll be killed."

He grunted. "I have precious little to live for these days. If you need me, call. I will come."

"Romayna and Kyouka-?"

He smirked painfully. "The boy is part of my squad now. He is courting Toma's brat. Romayna is stationed on Arbatsu."

"Good," I said. In spite of everything, in spite of the fact that he had just pulled me out of a spiral of dry-eyed madness, healed me in ways I still can't even measure yet, I was glad that Romayna hadn't taken him back. That he was still paying for the death of Chikyuu. I stood on tip toes and kissed his mouth chastely.

"You are a bastard and I'll hate you forever," I told him softly.

"That is good," he said solemnly.

Almost done with the Ki-gun. Batha says she hasn't heard anything yet about my request. She and I had an…altercation a few days ago, and today was the first time we've actually spoken since then. She's furious about my daily morning walks into the hills, telling me we'll all be killed if Vegita catches me screwing Bardock. I'd like to know how in the name of the gods she knows about that chance meeting last week! I told her that eight days ago was the first and only time I've seen Bardock in nearly a year. She didn't believe me and then…then she said that she's "never seen a whore with a stronger taste for monkey cock". She said I sure seemed to have really gotten into my job of royal bed warmer in the last month or so. Almost too much to believe that I wasn't really enjoying it.

I knew what was eating at her. I discovered a while ago that the way to keep him from using the _susaji _juice was to give him what he was really craving when he drugged me. Enthusiasm. The semblance of passion and affection. I learned that if I literally jump on him as soon as he walks in the door a few times a week, drag him into the bedroom even before he's eaten his dinner, and screw his brains out a few times, that he won't use the _susaji_ on me, _and_ he tends to be gentler with me.

I screamed at her that she was the worst sort of stupid, amnesiac bitch to think that I would ever want him, though inside I was shuddering with shame at how he always, always, always gives me pleasure. Caddi and Scopa had to pull me off of her. That was my first girl fight since third grade.

I can't hate her. I know what she's been through, and that our scars, mine, Caddi's and hers, all show in different ways. She is starting to hate me because I love and hate Saiyans as people. Not as a whole.

I am so glad that I met Bardock. I'm so glad I can cry for my son, and all the other people I've lost again. If I'd stopped crying forever, I think I would be well on my way to becoming just like Batha. And that's worse that being dead.

I woke this morning with a soundless shriek of horror, hearing the sound of men's voices in the hearthroom. One was Vegita's, the other…the other was horribly familiar, but I couldn't place it. I got up and bathed, the hackles rising on my neck as I listened to the muted conversation. It was just past dawn. The visitor must have important news to have come to wake Vegita in his own home. I toweled dry and combed out my hair quickly, listening intently while I dressed.

"…have no idea who has been supplying them?" Vegita was saying grimly.

"Mousrom has some suspicions," the deeper, older man's voice said. I stood shivering in wet hair, and the harsh bass of Vegita's guest sent another ripple of ice down my spine. "But we cannot move until we are sure. If we strike the wrong target, they will run again and we will be back at the beginning of the hunt once more." Was this the King, maybe? Vegita's voice sounded…comfortable. Easy.

Not affectionate, by any means, but-

"And there was nothing left when you arrived?" Vegita sounded openly skeptical.

"They could not have had more than a hour's notice, Ouji-sama," the older man grunted, "Yet we found nothing. They did not even leave their supplies behind."

"I will bathe and follow you to Council," Vegita said shortly.

"I will await you, by your leave, my Prince."

I darted out of the bathing room, still half dressed, before Vegita arrived, and into the kitchens, to find Caddi nearly finished setting up breakfast. Today was Batha's market day. I could hear Caddi rattling around in the pantry cellar, and I began picking at the food on the platter she was preparing to carry out. The acoustics for hearing what was being said in the hearth room were better in the kitchen. At least for Chikyuu-jin ears. Ansousei-jin are harder of hearing, which meant that Caddi had probably heard nothing of the conversation outside. When I looked up from the fried spor-hog strips I was eating, I was face to face with Nappa.

Nappa.

I was alone with the man who had killed my baby. And my Ki-gun was encapsulated in the twins' bedroom. He must have smelled the food and come to catch a quick bite before Vegita was ready. Then…I went mad, I guess. I don't know how my mind went from horror to mindless animal rage in an instant, but it did. His eyes were traveling over my half-clothed body with greedy appraisal.

I flung myself at him,

I don't know how I did it, but then, I don't know how I survived the last year either. I drew my nails down his face, drawing blood and he snarled like a rabid dog in anger. He didn't think about what he was doing, but then he's famed throughout Vegita-sei for being a brutish moron, even by Saiyan standards. He stepped forward, and pressed me back against the sideboard table, gripping me by the shoulders, lifting me in the air in preparation to smash me against the wall. The instant he touched me I froze absolute terror, the sudden vivid memory of Karot-chan and Raditz' deaths tearing through my mind's eye-just as Vegita walked through the swinging doors of the kitchen.

It was like a scene in a movie. He froze, his face going livid, Nappa's going pale as chalk. Then he tossed the bigger man out the open window of the kitchen and beat the living hell out of him. While I watched. He even "comforted" me afterwards, with a brusque, "No one may touch what is mine!" and a quick nip of my lip before he went outside to kick Nappa back to consciousness.

"He will not kill him for you," Caddi told me from the pantry door quietly.

"He might," I said. "In time."

She moved to stand beside me as I looked out the window to where Vegita was now bending over the big man. "Watch," she said.

I watched. Slowly, Vegita bent down and pulled Nappa to a wobbly sitting position. "Old fool," he said, without any anger in his voice.

The big man chuckled and spat out a mouthful of blood. He touched the side of his face where my nails had raked him and shook his head in amusement. "I ask your pardon, my Prince. She flew at me with those little claws bared and I lost my temper."

"It is well," Vegita snickered. "She is broken, but only enough to obey…barely. You taught me long ago that a bed slave should be completely broken, but I've found that a bit of will and spirit make for more interesting bed play." He reached down and took the big man's hand, pulling him to his feet. "Come, Sensei. My father awaits us."

They launched into the sky, and a gust of the force of their leaving ruffled my hair.

"Nappa was his caregiver from the day of his birth," Caddi shook her head. "He will beat him senseless, beat him to the point of death in a rage, but he will never kill Nappa. As much as their kind are capable of caring for one another, he loves the great brute."

That sounded true, I thought. It felt true, after hearing Vegita's voice when he spoke to Nappa, after seeing how he had checked himself just before delivering the killing blow. That's fine with me. I don't want anyone else to kill Nappa but me.

But it was good to see him beaten. And it will be good to see Vegita's face when I've killed Nappa. He's never lost anyone he loves, I think. I imagine that short list includes only Nappa and his father. If I had my wish, wished on a set of dark, vengeful dragonballs, I would wish for the Prince of Vegita-sei to suffer everything he's made me suffer before he dies.

Forgive me, Kami. Forgive me, Kai or Kais. I don't have the strength or serenity to stop hating him, and I doubt I ever will.

I found out why Nappa came to the villa to summon Vegita so urgently a few days ago. Tubol-sei is-was-a base world for the Red Demons. A Saiyan strike force fell on it with everything they had. And they found nothing, but an abandoned pre-fab city and a few garbage compactors. They were warned by someone on the Saiyan troop carrier itself-one of the Madrani engine techs. All the crew was summarily executed, but the base…the base had less than two hours warning and managed to evac completely. Guess how? Capsules are your friends, Jeiyce! He's apparently putting them to the best use possible, and I feel…Gods, I feel so happy. As though I saved all those people's lives myself. Which, in a way, I did.

Is this the reason for all the hell I've suffered? The grander plan? I keep looking for some kind of reason, something to give this last year of my life meaning. Because if there's no meaning to what I've been through, if I thought that-

I can't think that.

I won't.

It's getting warmer, a little more so every day. It's still icy cold at night, but the midday sun felt good on my face. And I found something yesterday that had not been there before. Early spring blossoms, a dozen different kinds of indigenous flowers, that unfold in the heat of the day and curl up into protective blooms as the afternoon grows colder. Pink and baby blue and deep violet, they were carpeting the hills around me in color.

I ran back to the villa and brought a spade and a few of Caddi's clay bread pots. I spent the entire day moving the stone tiles of the deck behind the house and replanting the wildflowers into a garden. It's small, but it can grow. It smelled like home, like Momma and her garden, and the rich, soft soil under my fingers felt like green growing things. I was so absorbed in my work, I didn't hear him come home. He stood in the back doorway of the hearthroom that led to my new garden watching me for a long time before he spoke.

"You are filthy," he said softly.

I glanced up, startled, almost not recognizing the sound of his voice. It was so gentle. I eyed him warily from behind my sweet doll-smile of welcome, wondering how he was going to react to my little project. He knelt and cupped my face in one hand with an odd half-grin. "I could scent spring coming in the air today. But you went out and brought it to me…So beautiful." I don't know if he meant the flowers or me. He brushed a smudge of dirt off my nose…then he frowned, looking puzzled. He seemed almost confused, as if he were trying to sort out a taste or touch he'd never experienced and had no name for. And I suddenly knew, _knew,_ he was trying to define the tender feeling that must have inspired that gentle gesture.

Kami, how pitiful.

He's beginning to care for me and doesn't even understand what he's feeling.

"Come to bath and bed, little mud flower," he said then, and lifted me like a child, carrying me to the bathing room. He bathed me and dried me off and lay me down on the bed. Then he had me, slowly and gently, just once, before nodding off, still inside me. I lay with him in my arms, his head cradled on my breast, feeling stunned.

_You could be running him in a few months time_, I heard Batha's voice saying again.

I have been pushing the limits of what I can get him to do, of what I can manipulate him into doing, but…running him isn't enough. And it's not the limit of what I can accomplish here. I can make him love me. I never believed that until last night. I never thought it was possible for him to care for anyone other than himself.

I'm going to work very hard to be the most pleasing, perfect, precious thing in his life. I want him to love me. That one chink in his armor last night made me sure it is possible.

I will make him love me. Then Kami have mercy on him. Because I won't have any.

_The text file scrolled to an end. Vegita stood unsteadily and moved to the disposal incinerator. He doubled over, emptying the meager contents of his stomach into the bin. How long he had been reading, he was not sure. He was vaguely aware that Coran had come once or twice to tap respectfully on the door._

_He had not answered._

_"I will hear it all, beloved…I will not turn away."_

_He lay back on his bunk and set the audio file to play out to the end._

Hi! This is me, talking again. It nearly wasn't. He decided about a week ago that he wanted to discontinue the Silencing. The first thing out of my mouth to him-or very nearly the first thing-nearly got me Silenced again. But even that was encouraging in a way. The reason he was so angry is because I made him feel…not guilty, but something distantly related to it. He has a low tolerance for hearing anything that makes him feel the least bit uncomfortable about himself or his actions. He ended up hurting me pretty badly, but I didn't let him see it. I didn't give him the satisfaction of making me cry out or even wince. I was the one who made him scream in the end. Several times, in fact. I did what I had never done before, pulled put all the stops and showed him, much to his surprise, that I knew a great deal more about how to work a man's body than he ever imagined.

I enjoyed it-making him cry out like that when he came. I imagined I was really hurting him, making him shriek in pain instead of pleasure…and the second that fantasy hit my mind, I started to come explosively, the most intense orgasm of my life.

I'm…Kami help me, I think I'm going mad. I could have taken anything else but this. I'm…I'm starting to crave him. To want him. And all he had to do was stop hurting me and go a little slower…How can that be possible?

Of all the things he's done to me, this is the one that may make me lose my marbles for real. There's a dark place in the human mind, I think…where, when hate becomes a passion as intense as the hatred I feel for him, it distills into pure passion. And in that black, unnamable pool in the darkest part of the heart, the line between pleasure and pain is razor thin.

It's also the only way I can take any power, any control, with him. I…

Kami, if I live through this, will I end up sexually twisted for life? End up some kind of power-obsessed, dominatrix freak?

I always loved making love.

But this isn't making love. It's a war against an enemy, waged with the only weapons at my disposal.

Batha told me her boss will meet with me as soon as my Ki-gun is complete. I am living in hope every day, breathing in and out in anticipation of being free. They can't refuse my request to be taken off Vegita-sei! I've proven myself too valuable, especially after Tubol-sei. The Ki-gun will be ready in a week. I told Batha to set up a meeting with our cell leader in eight days.

So, maybe my next entry will be from a ship, or maybe from a rebel base. I don't give a damn. Anywhere will be paradise if I'm free.

But before I go, I want to test my prototype out on a pre-chosen test subject.

I want to kill Nappa myself. The Network can't deny me that either. I've given them technology that can is going to tip the balance of the coming war if they use it well. I want to be paid back in blood. Nappa's blood.

Even after almost an entire year as the Saiyan no Ouji's plaything, I'd still rather break Nappa's little finger than kill Vegita ten times over.

I met our Red Network cell leader today. His name is Zarbon of Rashia-sei. He came to the villa with Caddi, this huge, greenish hulking reptilian man, dressed in the uniform of a maintenance s. His cover was that Caddi needed him to repair the plumbing (which Batha had sabotaged late last night). Vegita threw a verbal tantrum when the bath water sputtered and died this morning and told Caddi to get whoever she needed to fix it today. We sat in the bathing room and talked while he began to undo Batha's damage to the pipes.

"You are the Zarbon who was Vegita's personal chef before...before my time," I said.

The big serpentine face grinned toothily. "Scopa would have told you about me." The greenish tint of his cheeks deepened slightly. I suddenly got the feeling that he and Scopa were a little more than friends who had worked in the same household. "I think," he went on, "Vegita-ouji thought I might find you tempting if I remained in his household." He laughed out loud at my queasy diplomatic smile. Then...he seemed to blur, and he morphed without any warning into a different form. Blue skin, emerald green hair, humanoid male model's features-he was gorgeous. "Or perhaps," he said with a wicked grin, "he thought you might find me tempting." He watched my face redden slowly, then sobered and shook his head. "Rashia-jin have two forms. I rarely use this one, because Saiyans tend toward the irrational prejudice that a man this pretty must be up to no good. So...I bring to you the personal thanks of Jeiyce of Maiyosh, Lady. Your capsules saved the entire base on Tubol. I imagine you know that already. We are still testing and producing the invisibility shield. It doubles as a scouter shield, the techs tell me. Our engineers looked at your initial notes and swore up and down it was impossible. Then, they all went into a collective fit when they began to study the actual designs."

I handed him the data disc of the completed plans for the Ki-gun. "I have some requests."

"I'm sure," he said solemnly. "I've been given authority to grant you supplies and materials. Anything you wish, in fact. So long as you do not ask for the life of Vegita-ouji. Yet."

"I want Nappa," I said softly.

He was silent, regarding me with quiet understanding. "I know you do. I will promise you his head. My word of honor as a soldier in the service of the Red Prince."

I nodded warily and gave him a wish list of supplies. Then I asked the question. The one that had kept me living inside a false haze of hope for...for weeks. "You said anything. I want you to take myself, the twins, Scopa and a man named Hiru of Ansou-sei off world. To one of the Red Prince's bases. Even one of the technologies I've given the rebels should make me valuable enough to be considered worth moving." I held my breath, my heart frozen in my chest. If he said yes, I would be a free woman, perhaps as soon as this afternoon.

"It can be done," he said slowly. "I can get all of you off world tonight, if you wish. But...Bulma-san, there will be consequences. Have you considered what the Prince will do when he finds you gone?"

"I..." I saw what he meant. "He'll go mad when he finds me gone. He'll tear the slave quarter in the Capital apart looking for me, kill dozens, maybe hundreds of people. He'll..." I made a soft little sound of despair, feeling the walls closing in around me, feeling all my hope slide away like sand through my fingers. "I'll never get away from him...never."

"You will!" He said emphatically. I was a little startled when he reached out impulsively and took my hand, but I grasped his hand firmly in mine when he began to withdraw in horror at what he had just done.

"I'm not so damaged I can't bear to be touched," I told him.

"No, you're not," he agreed quietly. "Most women I have know in your situation…either crumble inside and die or become hard and lose the ability to feel anything but hate." He cut his eyes behind us involuntarily, back to where Batha stood guard in the front doorway, watching to warn us if Vegita came home.

"You're still alive," Zarbon said. "Still warm and kind-hearted, I've been told."

_Told by Scopa?_ I wondered with an internal smile. "Bulma-san," he said formally,

"I know we do not know each other, but we have a common purpose. I have, over the course of my life, lost as much as you, suffered as greatly. I ask you to trust me without question for a few more months. There is much I can't tell you, but I will tell you this-before the end of this summer, things will begin to happen very quickly. Everything will change."

I swallowed hard, fighting down tears of disappointment, forcing down an irrational rage at him because he would leave me after this conversation and go wherever he wished. Leaving me in the hands of Vegita as a reward for the gifts I had given his cause.

No…our cause.

I just nodded dully and accepted what he told me as truth. What else could I do? I mumbled a farewell and ran from the bathing room, blind with the tears streaming down my face. I understand the logic of his words. I understand the practical necessity. But, oh gods…

I won't survive another five months of this, _of him_, with my sanity intact.

It's been a couple of days. I started work on something new conceptually. Right now, I'm just doing some preliminary research on Vegita's uplink to the Royal Library in the little study on the south end of the villa. I've sort of made the room my own. I doubt he's ever read a book cover to cover in his life and I don't think he even knows it's here.

Things on the bedroom front are a lot less hellish than they have been. They nobility has gotten over their collective anger at him for Radtiz' murder, and in turn, he has become a lot easier to manage. I'm learning to manage him rather well, actually. He responds to flattery and affection like a little boy. He says I'm a 'foolish little weakling' for half the things I come up with to please and mollify him, but when I ask for something in a winsome, wistful fashion-saying things like "It would be so wonderful if…" or "I wish it were possible to have…", he gets it for me. He even asked me what I needed to build up the garden behind the villa. Everything I asked for was delivered the next day.

I tried a more advanced field test last night. I made him get out of bed and get me a glass of water. He did it before he realized what he was doing, then stood there, frowning at me suspiciously as I drank the water down. He's not stupid. I have to remember that. He's actually very intelligent for a Saiyan, maybe even brighter than Bardock. He just rarely stops to think about what he's doing until after it's done. I smiled up at him coquettishly after I finished my water, retreating to the defensive position of innocent sweetness. He smirked as he crawled into bed.

"Demanding wench," he chuckled softly in my ear.

It's a lot easier to be with him, to simply live in the same house with him, now that his overall mood has improved. But it's also been better since that day he found me building my garden. He seems to be taking more care not to hurt me, to use me more gently. I catch him looking at me from time to time with that same confused look. I can see him trying to work out just what it is he's feeling for me. He still won't talk to me, not about anything important that might be useful to the Network. I've been through all his personal effects, but he keeps absolutely nothing here relating to royal policy or official secrets. I'm starting to think that he may not be privy to anything the Network could use. Either he's not interested in what goes on in Council every morning, or his father knows what a loose cannon he is and doesn't tell him squat.

No word yet from Zarbon on how fast the secret factories are building my machines. There should be no snags. I gave them detailed instructions that a child could follow. For the moment, I'm on hold. But I can almost feel the tension in the air. Some kind of enormous storm is about to break. Before the end of the summer, Zarbon said. It's the full bloom of spring now. Maybe…maybe by fall, I'll be free.

I hope.

I woke yesterday with an odd tense kink in the back of my neck. No injuries.

That's getting to be the rule rather than the exception, these days. The last time he hurt me was a week ago. He cracked one of my ribs while he was asleep. The arm he was holding me with just contracted while he was dreaming and 'pop'.

I bathed, ate, took my walk, and tended my wild flower garden before spending the rest of the day in the study. All day I felt so strange, so awful. Sick and sluggish, my muscles cramping up, jumping at the slightest noise. I tried to get some work done, but I couldn't concentrate. I kept slipping away into this daydream of nothingness, shaking myself to find it was an hour later. The smell of food cooking finally drew me out of the study. It was late in the afternoon.

There were flowers on the crystalline dining table. There was food piled up, and a selection of wine. Like a celebration of some special-

I sat down at the table, staring at the flowers. Like an anniversary celebration.

It was one year today. One year since my son was murdered. One year since Raditz was murdered. One year since I became the bed slave of the Saiyan no Ouji. My body had remembered, had been grieving all day, even though my mind had forgotten. How did I forget? How could I?

_My baby,_ I thought. _My beautiful, sweet, perfect baby. I'm so sorry I killed you._

I sank beneath the surface of the world around me and stopped thinking, stopped seeing, stopped remembering, stopped hurting…stopped kicking to stay afloat and just allowed the dark, cool water beneath me to take me down into nothingness.

I woke to the sight of Vegita's face, pale and frightened. He must have been trying to wake me for some time. "I almost lost myself again," I mumbled.

He lifted me and…and we were out the window and into the sky before I realized what was happening. Up and up, above the clouds, above everything, on the fiery orange tops of the clouds. The west was ringed in a brilliant halo of the sun sinking below the rim of the world. He crossed his legs and sat, setting me in his lap, my head against his chest. He didn't say anything for a long time, and I couldn't. I think I told him that it was beautiful and he grunted some kind of response. After a long time, I turned to face him. He had the strangest look on his face. Or maybe it just looked strange on him. He wasn't frowning or angry, the body against mine was relaxed, not tense.

"Was it my fault?" I asked him. "Was it my fault you wanted me so badly? If I hadn't reacted to you, would Raditz still be alive? Would my b-b-baby?"

The peaceful expression slid off his face and he looked…I can't describe it.

Horrified, maybe. I think…I think for one, tiny second he had some distant, fleeting sense of what he's done to me. Of all he's done to me. Then, he frowned, visibly pushing that thought away, and seemed to consider the question seriously.

Then, he shook his head. "I think," he said softly at last. "Having laid eyes on you once, I would have burned half the galaxy to have you."

I began to wail. I think I cried until I passed out, or something close to it. Oh gods…oh gods, I know he meant what he said. He is many, many things, almost all of them horrible, but he couldn't tell a convincing lie to save his life.

It wasn't my fault.

It's not my fault.

It's not my fault.

I fell asleep in his arms, there on top of the clouds. He took me back, and didn't wake me. Didn't use me at all last night. He just lay me down beside him and went to sleep himself. I never would have expected to receive absolution or mercy at the hands of my enemy. It's a jarring inversion of my world to realize that the greatest evil in my life is just a man. An evil man…with tiny, almost infinitesimal sparks of goodness here and there.

I woke up today feeling good. The sun through the slatted windows was warm. Scopa tapped lightly on the bedroom door and came in to give me my morning exam. Once he determined nothing was broken or even bruised, he took my hand and pulled me out through the hearthroom and into the garden. I stopped, breathless at what I found there.

I turned to him when I was able to sleep again. "How?-"

"I know what day yesterday was," he said in his soft voice. "I…a few weeks ago, I took my flyer down to Turrasht. I went to your…"

"My house," I said, my eyes beginning to sting.

"The estate was abandoned," he said. "No one has been there since…since you left. Some of the blooms had survived the winter. Most did not, but the roots were still viable to be cloned. I brought back a bit of every sort of flower I could find and grew them in the conservatory greenhouse at Med Center and-and -" He broke off as I began to cry in earnest, throwing my arms around him, kissing his cheek. "Are-are you pleased?"

"Thank you!" I said, smiling through tears. "Thank you so much!"

He had grown potted copies if everything in my garden-Bearded purple and yellow flag irises, white and deep purple petunias, pansies, red oriental poppies, blue forget-me-nots, soft pink sweet william…and roses. Momma's roses, pale ivory, gold, baby pink and blood red.

I spent all day working with the stone tiles, clay urns and pre-cut blackwood lumber Vegita had ordered for me last week. I built stone circles, trailing flower umbrella stands and a couple of benches. Tomorrow I'll use the rest of the blackwood to build a rose trellis.

The one dark speck on the whole day was when Batha called me in for an early supper, her face pinched and disapproving. Whether she disapproved of my garden or the smile on my face, I don't know. I wonder if I make her sick and angry simply because I'm not deadened to any sort of joy, like she is. I know both the twins think I have it easy compared to the things they've lived through.

I don't have it easy.

But it's easier that it was.

It wasn't my fault. The instant he saw me, he "would have burned half the galaxy to have me", he said. And now that I know that, I can live again.

Vegita came home today, excited as a little boy. He grabbed me and lifted off the floor, swinging me around in his arms. "Today is a glad day, woman!" He almost sang. "Tonight my father sends me to face Jeiyce of Maiyosh, the Red Prince! We will take him in his hiding place and I will face him in battle!"

"It will be a glorious victory for you, Ouji-sama," I said sweetly, so excited myself, I could barely speak. He stopped spinning in the air and frowned slightly at the loving smile plastered on my face.

"When I return," he said softly, after watching me thoughtfully for a moment. "I will give you a gift of your choosing. Tell me, woman. What do you truly want? The truth."

"I want only to please you, my-" He put one finger over my lips, his frown deepening.

"Speak to me," he said solemnly, "as Bulma of Chikyuu, not as a slave in my household. Tell me truly. What do you want?"

Gods, what lousy timing for him to develop a taste for the truth! "The truth?" I said hesitantly. "The…the real truth?" I began to have to fight not to squirm in his arms, not to tremble against him in anger. _You don't get to see the real me, you_ _fucker!_ I thought. _You're not allowed!_ But…I could tell him just enough of the truth that he wouldn't smell the lies.

"A few years ago, during my first year on Vegita-sei," I said quietly, "I would have asked you for the head of Bardock on a silver platter. He purged my homeworld, and killed Son-Kun…his own son. Like he was putting a lame colt to sleep."

"That I would give you with great joy, woman," Vegita said, drifting back down to the floor with me. He sat in the great armchair before the window that looked down on the Capital, positioning me in his lap. The warm breeze tugged at my hair, ruffling it lightly. "But you no longer desire that?"

I smiled, turning my face away his, and gave him the pat, simplified explanation of why I hated Bardock, why he was better off alive. He would never understand how complex my feelings for the man really are.

"Cruel woman," he murmured softly, grinning. "So, then…" Vegita said, watching my face closely. "If not Bardock, what?"

"I guess a fast ship and my freedom is out of the question, huh?" I said before I thought better of it. And, thank Kami, he barely reacted at all. "I'm sorry, my prince…I-" He put his hand over my mouth again, speaking gently.

"Do not be. I commanded you to tell me the truth. But I will not lose you. Anything else is yours for the asking."

_Anything? _I thought coldly.

"Even if I ask you to kill Nappa for me?" I whispered. The hand he had been tracing my face with froze. I watched him, smiling a bit, enjoying this unexpected bit of power over his emotions. "He's your squad lieutenant now, and your aid. But he used to be your governess, didn't he?"

"Governess?"

"Your care-taker when you were a baby."

"Yes…Woman-"

"It's okay," I said softly, before this strange mood left him and he figured out I was deliberately screwing with his head. "I won't ask you for that either. I wouldn't want anyone in the galaxy to kill him except me." His body tensed against mine in real anger now. "So…" I said thoughtfully. "…let me think of a present that doesn't involve anyone killing anyone else. Can I have time to think about it, or do I have to decide right now?"

He considered. "Tell me when I return from Shikaji."

He carried me to bed and used me only once, quick and rough, before he rose and planted once last, nipping kiss on my lips. "I must go see to preparing the strike troops."

"I want to listen to the battle," I told him softly.

He grinned openly. The idea of showing off to me seemed to please him to no end. "Tomorrow at this hour, tune the hyper wave comm in my study to Imperial quadrant 27, channel 134 of the Shikaji trade communications array. You will hear all the transmissions from the strike fleet to Imperial High Command during the battle."

"I'll be listening," I said with a real, honest smile.

As soon as he was out of earshot, I crawled painfully out of bed and limped to the kitchens. I told the twins everything, that Shikaji was probably the target.

Batha took off like a shot to get word to Zarbon, while Caddi helped me with the bone sauter Scopa had given me and taught me to use a few weeks ago. He doesn't hurt me the way he used to, hardly ever in fact, but he was really excited and cracked a rib just from holding me too tightly. I lay down, waiting for the residual pain of the re-fused bone to recede, and we waited. I doubt I'll sleep a wink tonight.

Too much has happened! Oh gods! Batha came back after midnight, with a wide predatory smirk on her face. "The Red Prince will give the Saiyan no Ouji a warm welcome when he arrives on Shikaji."

The three of us pulled a bottle of Vegita's goldberry wine out of the cellar and toasted his painful, maiming defeat. Scopa came back to the villa unusually late and found the three of us laughing tipsily in the kitchen. Batha was smiling most of the night, something I'd never seen her do.

"This is the beginning of the end for them, Zarbon told me," she said, turning to me with a muzzy frown. "I have not been the friend to you I should have, Bulma. I…I should not have doubted your loyalty or said such awful things to you as I have."

All day long, we waited. We turned on the hyper light comm and programmed it to the proper channel early in the afternoon. We listened to the battle begin, listened to how the Saiyans slowly began to realize that the world had been almost completely evacuated before they arrived-with a great deal of help from my capsules, thank you. The battle seemed to be quickly turning to a rout, and the last evac ships jumped to hyper light speed, cloaked in my camo-shields, while the crews of the troop carriers sat oblivious. And the Saiyans, or more precisely their Prince, didn't even realize it was happening. Then, the word came, one unknown warrior's voice screaming through the comm of his scouter.

"The Prince! He is fighting the Red Prince! They are-" Two agonizing minutes of blurred static, and- "He is down! The Prince is down! I cannot see him through the flames! He-!"

Then, nothing. Nothing for six, long hours, while I waited, while I prayed to the gods of justice and vengeance that he was deaddeaddead!

"We have him, Sire!" came a man's harsh voice finally, crackling through the hyper light link. "He lives…he…Ou-sama, it is bad!"

The link we were on didn't let us hear the royal reply.

Let him die. God of gods, let him die. Let me be free of him.

It's three days later. He's been hovering between life and death for two of those days. The palace physicians gave the King no hope. He called in Scopa. I don't know how he knew of Scopa or why he asked for him, but…Scopa saved him, when all the others said he was a lost case. My best friend saved my enemy, so he could come back to me and be my master. And keep me as his slave and his whore.

No! I won't be angry at Scopa for his unconditional decency and goodness! For his complete inability to hate. I'll be humbled by this quality in my friend…and I'll try to wish my heart were as generous. Even though it never will be. I can't write any more tonight. I slept in Scopa's room, like I have every night since Vegita left and was injured. It's good not to sleep in that bed or that room. I'll have to bathe with scented soap and burn these clothes. If I smell like Scopa when Vegita comes back, gay or not, Vegita will kill him.

I met the King of Vegita-sei today.

They brought Vegita back, still half dead with pneumonia and shock, to recover in his own bed. Scopa hovered over him as the med techs carried him in and moved him onto the bed, checking this and that, his face tense and focused on his patient. I watched from the corner of the bedroom, staring at Vegita's still, pale face, so intent on him I didn't notice the man who had stopped beside me, until he spoke.

"You are sure that taking him from Med Center is not dangerous at all?" His voice was deep, harsh and more than a little threatening.

"He is out of danger, Ou-sama," Scopa said softly.

"You will have your freedom for this, fellow," the King rumbled. "The palace medics on my payroll gave him up for lost. Report to me his condition every three hours. I will be in War Council if there are any changes." He was bigger than Vegita, brawnier. But the resemblance was striking. He seemed to sense me studying him and turned sharply.

He stared at me silently, and…gods, I felt like I was under a microscope. As though those cold, black, accessing eyes could see through my skull and read my thoughts, to see that this was my doing. That I was responsible for his son's injuries and the loss of so many warriors on Shikaji. He reached out a hard hand and I trembled slightly as he tilted my chin up, studying my face. Then…then he grinned, like a wolf about to feast on a caribou foal. "Now, I see what all the fuss was about."

What a dangerous, dangerous man.

I understand now what Batha meant about killing the father and leaving the hot-headed son on the throne.

It's been a day since Vegita came home. He woke for a few minutes today, and smiled when he saw my face leaning over him. Scopa hasn't slept since they called him in to perform surgery on Vegita. He doesn't trust me to leave me alone with his patient. He thinks I'll do Vegita a mischief while he's helpless. Heh. I might, actually. But…no, not while he's helpless. It's not right to kill anyone, _anyone_, while they're laid out flat on their back, unable to move. But it is rather nice to set and watch him lying there hurt. When I kill Vegita, I want him wide awake and whole.

The King gave Scopa his freedom for saving Vegita's life. I'm trying very hard not to be jealous. Not to be angry at him for gaining his freedom by ensuring my enslavement.

Vegita woke for a few moments this morning, and sent Scopa out so he could talk to me. He asked me…gods. He asked me what he could do to make me love him.

I was so completely stunned by the question I didn't know how to respond. I gave him some sort of twisting mix of lies and truth as an answer. Maybe I gave him a lot more truth than I meant to. He keeps telling me to speak the truth. The real truth. I told him…I told him I want him. Kami…Kami…it's true. I crave him, that nightly battle where I take him and wrap inside the power I have over him, take his mind away and make him cry out as though I'd shoved a knife into his chest. I don't know if the sex has become so hot and overwhelming for me because the emotions I have for him-the hate beyond hate-are so strong. Whether the emotions are positive or negative, the state of arousal so much feeling creates in me makes for…for this blistering passion that seems to be growing inside me as time goes on. I told him…I told him that making me want him the way I do is the worst thing he's done to me. He swallowed hard at that, seeming to almost understand how bad that might be.

Then, I lied through my teeth. I told him it might be possible-that one day I might love him.

I left him with the implication that if that's what he wants from me, he's going to have to figure out how to be good to me, to stop hurting me altogether. If he takes it to heart, I may have made the rest of my time with him, however long it is, a lot more comfortable.

I decided what I want as my present. I told him today when he staggered out of bed and nearly passed out in the hearthroom. I want to apprentice under Scopa at Med Center. To learn medicine. Partly to get out of the damned house every day.

Partly to still be able to see Scopa since Vegita put him out of the household after his father freed him. And partly so I can have access to the medical equipment and privacy of Med Center, where I can build this new project I want to begin without Batha or Caddi looking over my shoulder. Also, so I can have direct access to Zarbon without going through the twins. Zarbon is a palace instructor chef who travels around Vegita-sei teaching apprentice culinary slaves how to cook. When he comes to the Capital, he always goes to Med Center. More specifically, to Scopa.

I asked Vegita for this as my 'present', and he agreed.

I was right.

He's going to try to 'be nice to me' now, to make me love him. Gods, how can a man with a bright mind be such a fool? How can he think, after everything that he's done in the last year, that I would ever feel anything but hate for him?

How can he not understand that?

I guess you could say that my first day at Med Center was eventful.

I flew with Scopa in his flyer over the green hills that separate the villa from the Capital, and for the first time, into the heart of the city. Scopa grinned when he saw the look on my face.

"Big, isn't it?" He said.

Med Center is on the southern edge of the Capital, nested in its own little range of rolling ridges. It's a giant half shell domed structure, white and pristine, like all medical facilities seem to be everywhere.

We landed and I followed Scopa through the labyrinth of halls and doorways to the surgery unit. And stopped behind him, gazing around as all the people in the meeting hall suddenly went dead silent, staring. Staring at me. I instinctively straightened my shoulders and held my head a little higher as I suddenly realized not all of the looks being directed my way were friendly.

"I know there's been some restructuring of departments as of this morning," Scopa said with a kind of quiet authority he'd used when the bearers had carried Vegita into the villa after his surgery. "But I've rearranged scheduled half days off and mealtimes so this will be a bit less of an inconvenience to everyone. Department head meetings will be in one hour. We'll sort the last of the kinks out then."

He turned to me. "I'm going to give you a guerrilla orientation of the complex, then turn you over to Nachti, one of my surgeons, for a couple of hours. She'll run you through you're syllabus of med texts and acquaint you with your hands on duties for the first few weeks."

I realized after he left me with Nachti, who gave me a polite but cool greeting, that something was very wrong. The medics seemed to be taking one of two tacts as they were introduced to me-nervous fear or poorly hidden animosity. After the third or forth such uncomfortable introduction, I finally asked Nachti point blank.

"Is there a reason I seem to be persona non grata?"

She stared at me blankly for a moment or two, then her golden Madrani face softened marginally. "The Prince commanded a departmental restructure of the surgical unit yesterday. It throws every other department's staffing off to take up the slack, and removes surgeons and med techs who were posted at Med Center to the Palace staff-my son included. He was only fourteen." She gave me a brittle smile. "The Prince had done this so that Scopa-san's closest staff will be comprised of females, non-hetero oriented males, and beings of genderless species."

I began to feel sick. "Because of me," I said unnecessarily.

"Because of you," she agreed, frowning tensely. "I know that none of this is your doing. I know-everyone knows-your story, Bulma of Chikyuu. But...it is a hard thing to see a spouse or child posted in another part of the Capital with no warning. And because of that I, and many other members of the medical staff, are less than pleased to have you join us. Also..." She paused, eyeing me. "There will be those who will fear you simply because of the power you wield as a royal mistress. A word from you in the Prince's ear would mean their death if they offend you."

"Power," I said softly, bitterly. "I would give anything to be free of that 'power'. I would trade places with anyone here in a heartbeat."

"I believe you," she said, a little more kindly, the muscles in her face working. "I have treated many, many pleasure slaves in my time. I have no illusions as to-" She shook her head. "Give everyone a bit of time, myself included. We are all slaves together, and they will see that you are the same soon."

I nodded and we passed the rest of the orientation session in relative ease, if not comfort. As she guided me through every nook and cranny of Med Center, making a winding path back to meet up with Scopa, I stopped at the supply loading dock, staring at a man who seemed to be moving in slow motion as he methodically geared down his freight flyer, while the porter slaves stood ready to unload his cargo. I watched him climb out of the flyer and turn slowly, saw him freeze as his eyes fell on me.

Then he came to me hesitantly, and I closed the distance between us, embracing him in a storm of tears. I looked up into his scarred, blank, ivory face, his huge black eyes that seemed to carry as much grief and loss as mine when I looked in the mirror.

"Hiru!" I sobbed.

His arms went around me slowly, as though he were sleep walking, then he pushed me back. "I am-Bulma, oh gods, I am s-s-sorry! I-"

"Shhh!" I said softly, touching the mass of scar tissue on his disfigured face, seeing now how he walking with a limp, how his arm was twisted at an odd angle. Kami, what must Nappa have done to him to make him talk? But he hadn't talked, had he? "I don't blame you for anything," I whispered. "We both know who is to blame."

"I am glad you survived," he whispered, cutting his eyes back to where Nachti stood, making sure she had withdrawn far enough from our reunion not to be able to hear his next words. "And...I am glad that you have joined the fight. The Network. We will avenge our children and spouses, Bulma."

"Yes," I said fiercely. "We will."

It made me feel strange when he left, promising to meet me and really talk tomorrow. Zarbon must have approached him and recruited him, and I'm sure he was more than eager, but... It's starting to seem to me that the Network preys on those who have been hurt the most, gives them purpose, a reason to live when they have nothing left to live for-but, there's a calculation in it, a knowing that such people are vulnerable to manipulation and can be easily honed into suicidally loyal weapons for the cause.

I spent he rest of the day, shadowing Scopa as he explained this and that, learning to use some of the more rudimentary med technology. I began to get a little frustrated by the middle of the day, realizing that the curriculum Scopa had planned for me was far too unexcellerated and that I would die of boredom in a couple of days if I went at this pace. I speed read the first of my texts during lunch hour and gave it back to Scopa, asking him to drill me on it. He did. After about an hour of asking me more and more in depth questions on that first text, he sat me down and gave me a pile of data discs.

"Photographic memory and total comprehension of the material," he said with a little grin. "I feel as though I've insulted you. I should have known better than to put you on the normal apprenticeship track. A change, then-your spend the first half of each day reading everything I give you, and the second half shadowing my rounds for hands on learning. Tell me when you finish each text and I'll give you oral comp exams on it at the end of every day." He laughed softly. "At the rate you'll learn, I may be taking orders from you in a year."

Near the end of the day, I followed the sound of hushed conversation from the garden conservatory where Scopa had left me studying, which is a green jungle of plants from a hundred different worlds. What seemed like the entire staff of the complex was gathering at the exit by the emergency landing pads, looking up at the high, spired peek on the mountain on the western edge of the city, Cho-tal. Smoke plumes were funneling up from a ceremonial pyre and the sky was full of warriors, hovering in the air in receding rings around the burning body on the flat apex of the peek.

"What's happening?" I asked someone.

"The King is in attendance at the funeral," a man in front of me said, not looking down from where his eyes were fixed on the sky. "The Prince himself lit the pyre. It's not something you see every day." He dropped his voice and added almost under his breath. "And it is a cause for celebration to many. Lord Nappa was hated and feared, even among his own people."

I stared at him, not registering the words for a moment or two, the world going gray around me. "Lord Nappa is dead?"

"Praise to the goddess that he is dead," a Madrani woman beside me said softly.

I walked through the corridors to Scopa's offices and asked him in a blank, expressionless voice if I was done for the day. He seemed preoccupied, and I came out of my shock just enough to lay one hand on his shoulder.

"What's wrong?"

He shook his head. "Zarbon has...dropped out of sight again. One office of the palace admin thinks he's in Subosh city to the west and the offices in Subosh think he's been detained in the Capital for a few days. Which means he's doing something very, very dangerous...again. I don't ask questions, but I have a pretty good idea of what he's involved in, and..." He sighed heavily. "I worry all the time I will receive word one day that he has been taken by Imperial Intelligence or killed outright." He seemed to shake himself, then looked up at me and smiled ruefully. "He'll turn up. He always does. Go home and rest before the Prince arrives this evening. You have made a wonderful start here today."

I went back to the villa, taking the little flyer Scopa had requisitioned for me, and found the house empty. I didn't wonder were the twins were. I think it really hit me then, that Nappa was dead.

And I started to scream. It was...gods, it was a kind of insane rage, full of all the pain, all the anger, all the hate I had bottled up and swallowed like bile for more than a year...maybe for six years. Ever since the death of Chikyuu. I began to trash the hearthroom, throwing or breaking everything I could get my hands on, and at some point I looked down and saw a huge gout of blood spurting from my wrist from where I'd somehow slammed my hand through the crystalline top of Vegita's ugly, ostentatious dining table. But I couldn't stop screaming and I couldn't stop smashing things. It went on...I guess until I lost so much blood that I began to grow too weak to move around. I ended up collapsing in the window sill, too far gone to even call out or get to a comm to send for help. I sat there, feeling my life pour out of my body with my blood.

Vegita's face swam into view after a while. I wasn't sure whether he was real or a hallucination, but I tried to tell him it had been an accident, to beg him not to kill Scopa and the twins. I passed out then and dreamed about Nappa, seeing his giant fist wrapped around my baby's little body as he crushed his neck and spine, hearing again the way Karot-chan cried out just once, his baby voice full of so full of pain and fear… _Her voice wavered into soft sobs, and she did not speak for several minutes. _I woke up screaming Karot-chan's name, and Vegita shook me hard, telling me to shut up. That no amount of wailing would bring back the dead. His words were harsh and cold but his voice broke when he spoke them. His arms were around me, stroking my hair gently…and I realized he was very close to tears himself.

I was right-he's never lost anyone he gave a damn about and he had no idea what to do with the feelings. He asked me a moment or two later when the pain would stop. He wasn't talking about my pain…he was asking how long before the pain of losing the man who had raised him would dissipate.

Gods, what a surreal night.

We talked…or I talked and he listened, while I told him about Karot-chan, while I explained how I loved the son so much more than the father…because he was all mine and beautiful and innocent and…He didn't really understand most of what I told him, but it was good just to talk. He didn't understand how I could set so much store by someone who couldn't even talk yet. Saiyans are so frighteningly alien in their ideologies-ideologies that seem so often to go completely against the inborn nature of a people whose emotions run so deep and fierce. Maybe these cruel, unfeeling ways evolved in their culture to shield them from loving so much they died of grief when they lost their mates, their parents, their children, their friends.

I lay all night in the arms of my enemy, taking comfort in the warmth of his body and the silent, solemn way he listened as I told him things I'd never said aloud, never told another person, as I talked about my baby. We lay together, each of us grieving in for a different loss. He loved the monster who killed my baby, I thought distantly. The man who cared for him, who raised him…who made him, more than likely, into the son of a bitch he is today. The conversation between the two men on that day he beat Nappa for touching me came back to me. "You taught me long ago that a bed slave should be completely broken…" Vegita had told him. Gods…every horror in my life can be traced back to Nappa. Even Vegita being the spoiled, vicious bastard that he is.

"Do you hate me as greatly as you did Nappa?" He asked at one point. "Do you dream of killing me still? Tell me truly, woman. I slew Raditz in single combat. My hand did not take the boy's life, but I would have ordered it done just the same, though not before your eyes."

"I would have ordered Nappa's death if I could have," I said carefully. I had no intention of taking his hope of 'making me love him' away. "But I didn't. And you would've ordered Karot-chan killed. But you didn't. Might-have-beens aren't the same as deeds done."

"No," he said bluntly. "But the blame is still at my feet, woman."

"Yes, it is," I told him in a cold voice_. All_ the blame, you fucker. A sudden rush of icy hate tore through me and made me throw all caution to the wind and speak plainest truth. "But I wouldn't kill you, Ouji-sama. Ever."

He grinned suddenly, condescendingly. "That is a relief."

I gave him a lengthy, detailed list of all the ways I could kill him, watching his face grow still, feeling his hand tense around my neck_._

"You've given this some thought," he said harshly.

"And decided against it," I told him with a wicked smile, trailing my fingers tauntingly down his spine, stopping just about his tail. "When I take revenge on you, I won't kill you."

"A fate worse than death for me?" He gave me a predatory grin, a low purr beginning to vibrate inside his chest as I dropped my hand a little lower, teasing the base of his tail. "So, how do you plan to torture me, woman?"

I smiled wickedly. "With love. I'm going to make you love me. Real love, Vegita no ouji. Mad and boundless and forever, like the twinned souls of moonbound warriors. I'll make you love me…and when you do, when I'm absolutely sure I have your whole heart, I'll use that love to destroy you."

He laughed out loud. "You have a very elevated opinion of your place in my life, woman."

"Think so?" I kissed him deep and sweet and gripped his tail hard. He growled, his eyes lighting with desire and excitement at the thought of a contest of this sort. "You're half-way there already."

His face froze and then slowly began to turn red with rage…but behind that, I saw a flash of unease. "You…insolent bitch!" He snarled like an angry panther, and his arm tightened angrily, snapping one of my ribs audibly. He raise his hand to belt me…but the blow never fell. He lay frozen above me, his face a mix of confusion and anger and…and dawning horror. He eased his hold on me and poked the fractured bone gingerly.

"Is the tank in Scopa's old surgery still there?" He asked softly. His face had gone dead pale.

"I don't need a tank for this." I told him. "There's a bone sauter in my wardrobe beside the bed. I can mend it myself. It'll be knitted good as new by the time I go to Med Center." A horrible thought occurred to me. "I can still go to Med Center, can't I?"

He grunted. "I gave you my word, did I not?"

He watched me silently while I welded the break back together, growing more and more excited as he visibly winced whenever I did. _I've got you, you bastard!_ I thought. I don't know when it happened, maybe it's been brewing inside him for a while…but he cares for me! No…he loves me! The next step, of course, is to get him to admit it to himself. Then to me. Then…oh Kami, then gods help him!

"It's not that bad." I said softly. "Just a hairline fracture."

"How would you know, woman," he asked irritably, a sympathetic shudder, almost invisible, but there, running through his body as I winced again.

"Vegita…" I said a little coldly. "You've broken my ribs more times than I can count. Just from holding me too tightly. A couple of times while you were asleep. This is the first time you've ever noticed." He swallowed hard, digesting that bit of information…it was something he'd known, but never taken any notice of until now. He looked vaguely nauseous for a moment, and I could see him remembering what it had felt like to be pinned down while Jeiyce crushed his own ribs and drove them like bullets into his lungs.

"It's not as bad as your injuries were," I told him softly.

"Have I ever-?" He stopped the question before he got it out, hissing with fury at himself.

"Never as bad as Jeiyce hurt you," I said.

Then he rebelled against it, against everything he was feeling, and grabbed me hard with a vicious snarl. "Do you think I give a damn about you?! You live and continue to live for my pleasure. You are nothing outside of that! You are my whore until I see fit to have done with you, and nothing more! Nothing more!"

"Which one of us are you trying to convince, Vegita?" I whispered, cold and mocking.

He threw me down, pushing my legs apart "Woman," he growled into my face. "I do not give a damn about you."

But I could see the lie in his eyes, and the fear that this sudden, dawning realization had awakened in him. "Yes, you do." I sneered.

I wrapped my legs around him and pulled him deep inside me, and he couldn't stop. He had to have me, had to obey the raging madness of want I'd lit inside him, but his face was a mask of agony as he battered into me, gasping in empathy each time I cried out as he ground the half-healed bone together with each thrust. He came inside me with a cry that was more pain than pleasure, and knowing that, knowing I'd hurt him in that way, sent me over the edge with him, almost shrieking.

"I will win this game of yours, woman," he said when he could speak again. "I will make you adore me, fawn upon me, give me every piece of yourself that you have held back, until I own you. All of you, body and soul! I will make you-" He

stumbled over the word.

I kissed him softy, smiling up at him. "Love you? You don't know how, Vegita. You can't even make yourself say the word. You don't know how to fight a battle that doesn't involve brute strength and fighting power. I do. You're going to lose this little war, my beautiful Prince. And when you do, you'll be the one who is enslaved."

"We shall see," he said, his eyes gleaming with renewed excitement. I had just declared war, and a Saiyan will always run headlong into any conflict with a song in his heart.

He helped me dress, studying the bruises he put on my body, the inexpressive planes of his features twisting again minutely with dull horror. "My word to you, woman," he said softly. "You will not receive so much as a bruise from my hands hereafter."

I went to Med Center this morning. I received a much warmer welcome today than yesterday. Word had gone around the entire complex like wildfire last night. The rumor was that Vegita had brought me in near death after beating me. I'd actually rather have them all think that than know the truth-that I nearly committed accidental suicide in a fit of rage. The result was pretty much the same.

Everyone was kinder and less hostile.

I found Scopa in his offices and went pale when I saw the patient he was treating. Zarbon's gorgeous blue skin was scorched with angry burns and gashes. Scopa introduced us stiffly, his face pale and angry whenever his eyes met Zarbon's, and we pretended to exchange first pleasantries. I helped Scopa set his broken forearm in tense silence, until he received a page from the O.R.

"Can you keep him company for a few minutes and give him an infection inoculation, Bulma?"

I nodded, and watched him leave after throwing one last balefully angry glance in his lover's direction.

"He's upset with me to put it mildly," Zarbon said ruefully. I stared at him stonily.

"You were at the battle," I said coldly.

He stood and pulled a large, gray, led box out of his duffel beside the patient's cot. "Yes," he said grimly. "I bring you a gift from my Prince, Bulma. He acquired it especially for you. The first payment for all you have done for the revolution." He opened the lid of the box, and my breath caught when I saw what was inside.

It was Nappa's head.

"I promised you this," Zarbon said fiercely. "Jeiyce-sama struck the mortal blow, but he and all the other Saiyans who fell on Shikaji are dead because of your warning. Just as all the Maiyosh-jin and other inhabitants of that world are still alive because of you. You have avenged your son, Bulma."

"Close the lid," I said softly.

I began to cry. It didn't help to know I'd killed Nappa. How could I have thought it would? My baby is dead. Karot-chan is dead and an ocean of vengeance and blood won't bring him back. Zarbon put his arms around me after an awkward moment and I clung to this man who was a virtual stranger, sobbing so hard I began to have trouble breathing. As the sobs began to taper down, I began to slip away, to lose my sense of what was going on around me.

"…hasn't done this in a while," Scopa's voice was saying from far away. I felt a tiny pinch of a hypo on my arm. "Less and less since he stopped hurting her so systematically. But…"

"She seems so frail," Zarbon murmured.

"She's not," Scopa said softly. "You don't live through what she's survived unless you've got ardantium in your spine. But…but even ardantium will snap if you put enough pressure on it long enough…"

"She'll be all right, love," Zarbon said. "I think it's just…I think she thought Nappa's death would make her son's death hurt less."

Scopa made me lie down the rest of the day and study in bed. At the end of the day, I returned to the villa to find the hearthroom lit with candles and a new blackwood dining table set with heaps of food. Vegita greeted me and bowed mockingly.

"Lady," he said, smirking. "Will you dine with me this night?"

So, battle was joined already, was it? One corner of my mouth quirked. "I suppose," I said.

"Lady," he said, moving toward me slowly, his voice dropping to a seductive purr. "Will you share my bed this night?"

I stuck my nose in the air and walked past him to the table. "We'll see," I sniffed hautily.

I've been crazy busy for the last few weeks. Vegita's training like a madman. He found a dock slave, of all people, whose raw strength is about twice his own.

He commandeered the man to be his sparring partner, and has this guy beat the hell out of him every day. I'm training too. Studying and researching to work out the seemingly innumerable kinks in the practical construction of a completely new sort of shield-at least, whenever I can find two spare minutes to rub together. I took my medic's board exams a week ago, but Scopa wants me to have more than a few weeks of hands on practical experience before he grants me full physician status. So, for now, I'm a lowly intern.

I have a social life! I eat with people every day, talk and gossip while we work. I see Hiru when time allows. Zarbon told me not to tell even Hiru what I've built for the rebels-he thinks I spy on the Prince and nothing else. But he did call me "the heroine of Shikaji," and knows it was my warning that saved the people there. I like the sound of that. It's sad…he was such a vital, happy man in his quiet way, and now all he can seem to think about or talk about is the Network. His eyes were so warm before. Now they're dead, and only seem to catch life when he talks about the revolution. Nachti's getting to be a friend, and it's good to work beside her and Scopa. When was the last time I had friends?

Chikyuu, I guess.

Son-kun and Yamcha and Krillan-kun and…

Every night, I return to the villa and Vegita and I dance our elaborate waltz of mental, verbal and sexual combat. He doesn't know he's lost already. He's determined to win this "game" at any cost. He's given me free reign to leave the villa whenever I please, to rearrange the house as I wish-I turned his little library into my private medical study. He grits his teeth and lets me say whatever I wish, contradict him, argue him down on any subject you could name. He pretends to be the flattering suitor, playing at seducing me every night-as though I had a choice. He uses me gently now, taking an inordinate amount of care not to hurt me or even bruise me…

I pretend to dote on him, smothering him in sickly sweet words and affection. At the end of the night, we make our way back to the bedroom and I kick out all the stops. I use every little bit of skill I learned from Raditz-who slept with half the known galaxy before he met me, according to his squad brother Kyouka. I've done things to him in the last few weeks that would make a Serulian love goddess blush.

A while ago, the first day he gave me back my voice, when he took me gently and made me howl with pleasure, I told him I wished he had just kept on hurting me. In many ways…Kami, in many ways, I still wish that. Because each time we're together these days, I feel an echo of that abyss of complete madness that came so close to swallowing me the first time I let him have me-the first time he made me come, against my will, against all sanity and reason, after all he had done in the previous months. I want him. I…gods, I cringe at the thought when he's not with me, but the instant he puts his hands on me, I want him like an addictive drug. All the hate I feel for him is transmuted into passion, effortlessly and horribly leaping the thin line between rage and desire. And because my hate for him is so immeasurable now…so is my desire. I will go stark, raving, frothing at the mouth mad if this goes on much longer.

He actually thinks he can make me love him. That just staggers me. But…I guess when you've spent your entire life with no real sense of anyone's feelings but your own, you could be that obtuse. The moments of actual empathy, like when he made the mental connection between Jeiyce breaking his ribs and all the times he's done the same to me, are still rare. But he's been true to his word and hasn't put one bruise on me since the night after Nappa's funeral.

It's strange, but I really enjoy the dinner conversation every night. He's a lot brighter and better educated than I would have ever given him credit for, and our opinions are so diametrically opposed on almost everything, it makes for good debate. And it's very freeing to argue with someone when you have absolutely no regard for their feelings at all.

Last night, he came back from training early and found me sitting in my garden.

"What is this?" He asked, sitting beside me on the bench.

"A medical text," I said, raising the book up to cover my face, pretending to ignore him.

"Saiyan Sexuality and the Moon," he read the spine, snickering.

"Saiyan sexuality…heh," I snorted. "I don't know any other kind."

He pushed the book down, and leaned forward. "Books can only teach so much," he smirked. "You need field research, woman."

I thrust the book up between us again, and peeked around it with a sly smile. "I have a headache, dear."

He frowned. "You are ill?"

"No," I said. "I'm just…not in the mood." He stared at me, his face beginning to go red with suppressed anger. I smiled sweetly. "You're a loving, kind man who respects my delicate sensibilities, aren't you, Vegita? I know you are. Because I could never love a man who wasn't."

He sat there for a full minute, trembling from head to toe with the effort to control himself. Then…then, he crawled off to bed, his tail lashing behind him.

I can't push that kind of thing too far, and I know I'll have to make it up to him tomorrow night…but gods, it felt good to turn him down flat. I slept on the little cot in my study and woke up smiling.

All the greatest changes in my life always come without warning and nearly instantaneously. Yesterday was one of the "change" days.

The emergency sirens went off at half past noon and the entire trauma team, myself included, ran for the landing pads. Scopa was shouting orders like a drill sergeant, turning to me hurriedly as we went. "Stay with me! You've never seen field surgery before and I don't want to throw you in to swim on your own. You'll be my pre-op aid. Bring the rad inoculation unit up from the pharmacy, Nachti!"

We hit the ground level to see a full sized troop carrier falling down on us in slow motion. There were warriors all around it, easing it down to the ground. I saw Bardock and Toma among them, but I couldn't stop if I wanted to keep up with Scopa and hear his instructions.

The whole day was a blur, of sorting the dead, the dying, and the viable wounded. Of passing out rad hypos to the thousands of warriors who showed up to help. The Maiyosh-jin had struck the first blow in the war of revolution. They hit Arbatsu's ship yards and garrisons with plasma nukes.

Plasma nukes.

A plasma nuke melts you in your bunker, in your ship, in your home. It burns you alive if you're lucky. The radiation is nasty in that it is fatal, but not quick. Sufficiently high doses will kill you even with an inoculation. It maimed the survivors, one and all. Melted their flesh off their bones, dissolved limbs…It…I don't want to talk about all it did. Vegita arrived early on and took command of the trooper salvage at Scopa's request-if they'd let a carrier break up in the atmosphere, it would have irradiated the entire region. I caught Bardock's arm at one point, as I suddenly remembered that Romayna was stationed on Arbatsu. His face was pale and drawn with terrible worry, but he told me she was strong and clever and would have survived.

It was a terrible, awful, long day, but it didn't last forever. Vegita, an immortal god in his own mind, didn't take a rad injection until all the carriers were grounded. Then he passed out, falling out of the sky. Bardock, of all people, caught him and set him down beside the inoculation station I'd set up on the main landing pad.

"I thought you'd just let him fall," I said, turning Vegita over. I pressed the

inoculation hypo into his arm and he shuddered, coughing up blood.

"The little bastard caught a lucky break," Bardock grunted. "Vegita-sei can't afford to lose her Prince on the eve of war. And…he's done a man's job today. He saved a lot of warriors. I can always kill him later."

"I guess I'll have to wait as well," I said, grinning up at Bardock's grimy

face. "He's going to need a tank. He's got internal tissue breakdown."

Scopa came by and eyed the two of us warily. "I'll take him from here." He said.

"Can't imagine why the fellow wouldn't trust the two of us to care for him," Bardock chuckled humorlessly. "I have to find my woman in all this mess." He got up and strode away.

An hour later, during my twentieth run to the supply storage, I ran into Hiru, sitting on a stack of crated med swabs. "A good day," he told me, smiling.

"What?" I said breathlessly, wondering why he wasn't above helping out.

"It's been good to see them burnt," he told me with a horrible flat smile. "And better to see them die."

"Raditz and Karot-chan were them," I said softly, feeling suddenly ill. I hadn't thought of the war in personal terms, had I?

"Raditz was kind to my family," he agreed. "But he scoured Corsaris to the ground, Bulma. He loved you…and look where it got him. Killed by his own kind because he was less evil than the rest of them."

"Romayna-san was stationed on Arbatsu," I said coldly.

His lifeless, shark smile faltered a bit, but he shook his head. "She was kind to you, but I was just another slave to her-to be used up and put down like an animal when I grew too old or weak to work." His gaze softened at the stricken look on my face, some remnant of the kind man I knew in Turrasht waking inside him. "Romayna-san is the enemy now, Bulma-chan. This is war. You cannot love and weep for both sides, and you shouldn't try. It'll just hurt twice as much when the killing really starts."

I swallowed hard, fighting to keep from screaming at him. Or to keep from screaming in general. In spite of everything, there wasn't enough hate in me to condone the horrors I'd seen today, and I had a horrified suspicion that this was going to be a standard grizzly tactic on the rebels part. And I suddenly began to have trouble breathing as another suspicion hit me like a falling mountain. "How do you think they got the nukes through the sensor nets around Arbatsu?" I asked him.

"I've heard Network rumors of new weapons," he said with quiet excitement. "They say Jeiyce has a Madrani mastertech inventing weapons for him to-Bulma!" He caught me as I half-fainted.

I had heard from survivors all day that they had never seen the enemy ships, on the orbital scouters or with their own eyes. And the nukes…oh gods, oh gods…

They capulized them and shot the pellets that were too small to be detected through the sensor nets. They expanded on a delayed timer and detonated…

I killed all those men on Shikaji when I warned Zarbon, but I never saw their faces.

I never smelled their burned flesh of heard their cries of pain. And they…they went to Shikaji to purge it, so to hell with them! I won't ever feel a shred of guilt about Shikaji.

But these people were killed in their barracks beds, at mess, on the training fields. And they never had the chance to fight back. I killed them. I killed them all with my capsules and the cloaking camo-shields that let the Red Demons get right on top of the planet without any warning.

I didn't know! Kami, believe me, I didn't think what could happen, how the technology could be used. Poppa never conceived that capsules could be used as weapons and neither did I.

I stumbled up to post-op, past the hundreds, thousands, of injured, and then into the ward full of the dead and dying. And I…I saw Bardock. He had found her. He had found Romayna. I moved toward her med cot in a dream, feeling my stomach lurch as I saw her face, her beautiful face…or what was left of it.

Half her body was…was just melted away. I choked and began to sob. My fault!

I killed my beloved's mother. She always treated my like a person…she was my friend. And I killed her. Along with hundreds of thousands of others on Arbatsu.

She looked up when she saw me…and she smiled.

"Do not dishonor her death with tears, daughter," Bardock said softly

"Let her weep," Romayna whispered. "She is neither Saiyan nor a warrior-

though only for want of fighting power. I…knew you would survive when Raditz and the babe were slain." She laughed softly, her rich warm voice now nothing more than a rasp. "Tell me, Bulma…have you bent the Saiyan no Ouji to your will as completely as you did my firstborn?"

"Romayna-san…" I felt like a knife was sawing into my side.

"I think…he will learn that it was folly to make an enemy of you before the last dance is done. All my goods and chattels I bequeath to you, girl. And what lies safe in the incu-ward below us as well…to ease your grief."

"Romayna," Bardock said. "The girl is not her own mistress. All you will to her, you give to the man who slew Raditz."

"Bar-kun…" Her breath was getting weaker by the moment. "Nothing is forgiven, beloved. Not yet. You have not yet earned it. You will know when you have…But I will not look on you as I die. Go." He bent and kissed her burnt bloody mouth, and left, sobbing harshly under his breath.

I stayed with her until she died, watching her strong, vital Saiyan body fight off death until the last. And she told me what she had willed to me and where to find it. "I hear…" she said faintly at the end. "I hear a Voice, daughter."

"What does it say?" I whispered, shivering.

"He says…He says, 'Do not give way to hate.' He says…" She choked, her voice drying to a wispy rattle. "He says… 'The Legendary is come.' My son…" Then…then she died.

I think I collapsed, because I woke later on a cot bed, covered in a light blanket. I sat up and looked over to my right to where Scopa lay sleeping on another cot, dead to the world.

I took the route she's told me, following the twists and turns into the bowels of Med Center, into the one part of the enormous complex I had never visited. Scopa had been very careful to never take me here, or even mention the ward in my presence. The incu-ward. I stopped in front of the pod Romayna had guided me to-#13578. I stared in at the sleeping face and sobbed softly, hammering my fist down on the extraction control. The pod door opened and…and I reached inside and pulled out the tiny occupant, sliding down to the floor with him in my arms, my back against the pod. I held him, staring in wonder at the windmills spikes, just like Bardock's, just like Karot-chan's…just like…

He opened his eyes and smiled up at me. "Son-kun…" I said, beginning to cry.

"My baby…my beautiful baby."

It was him. I knew him instantly, just as Kami said I would.

Everything else went out the window…Romayna's death, all the thousands upon thousands of men the Red Demons had killed today with the machines I gave them to defend themselves. I sat and rocked him lost in the simple happiness of having him in my arms.

A harsh voice, speaking softly, sliced through head and I looked up…and screamed. Vegita. I lost my mind with terror. It was Vegita, come to kill my baby again, to take him away from me a second time. I ran, screaming in mindless terror, and he caught me, shaking me, finally shouting to get me to hear his words.

"I will not harm him, woman!" He roared.

I came back to my senses, but only partially. I…I think I was very close to losing it completely when I sank down on my knees before him, begging him for what I knew he would not give. "Please...Please, Vegita...Oh gods, please let me keep him! I'll do anything...Anything! Please don't take him away from me again!"

He stared at me, and whatever he saw in my face made him blanch with worry. "Woman…" He said slowly. "This is not the same boy."

"I don't care!" I shrieked. "Oh gods, please, Vegita…please."

He was silent, his face shrouded in the dim light of the incu-ward. Then, he spoke slowly. "Keep the brat here," he said. "I will not have the son of Bardock sleeping under my roof. But you may keep him at Med Center. Scopa will attend him at night. Will you not, doctor?"

"With all my heart, Ouji-sama," Scopa whispered.

"You understand that he must go to the children's barracks at four year of age?" Vegita asked sternly. I nodded reluctantly. "It is done then. I am leaving Vegita-sei in the morning to hunt the Red Prince, and to give our enemies an answer to their attack yesterday. It may be months before I return. You will dwell here at Med Center while I am gone. Keep the boy by your side night and day if you wish."

"Vegita..." I wanted to say something, but at that point…gods, I was too emotionally exhausted to think, let alone speak.

He commanded Bardock to watch over me while he's gone, I remember that. Because he's apparently made a nasty enemy of Mousrom of Intelligence, the master torturer and thinks the Inquisitor might kill me while he's gone to spite his Prince. The rest of the evening is a blur. We ended up, for some unknown reason, spending the night in the little apartment Scopa gave me in the residents' wing. I was in such a state of shock over…over everything, that I don't remember much of anything else. Except for two things. The first is pushing him down on that little bed and bending down to kiss him, my eyes full of tears, and saying 'thank you'. Thank you for letting me keep Son-kun. And thank you for going away.

The second is getting up after he had fallen into an exhausted, boneless sleep, and rocking Son-kun in my arms. No…not Son-kun. Romayn. For his mother.

Rom-kun.

For a second or two, I started to sing Karot-chan's lullaby, but I stopped, frowning. No…he needed his own song. So, I sang the song my Western grandmother taught Momma when she was small. The one about the mockingbird.

It's morning.

He left. He got up before dawn, and went to hunt Jeiyce across the galaxy. He leaned down and kissed me slowly, for the longest time, making a memory he could take with him while he was at war. Then he brushed the tears out of my eyes, his face going still and then...softening with honest pleasure. He kissed me one more time, wordlessly…and he was gone. Just like that I'm free of him. I guess he was touched in his own rough way that I cried when he left me. I wonder what he'd think if he knew my tears were tears of joy. Joy that I would be free of him for months. Maybe forever.

Kami! Months and months of no Vegita! I'll be at Med Center the whole time, living and working with these good people, and-shit. I'll have to go back to the villa every day though. I can't trust Batha, or even Caddi, to take proper care of my flowers. And I think I'll start a branch division of my Chikyuu garden here at Med Center while I'm at it.

I am happy.

I shouldn't be, not with Romayna dead, not with an over-flowing post-op and morgue, not on the first day of a galactic war that will be bloody and horrific in ways I'm just barely beginning to understand. But I took a lacta injection first thing this morning, and in two weeks, I'll be able to nurse Rom-kun.

It's evening of the same day.

I spent all day tending the men and women he and Jeiyce butchered with my machines. It was bad, because...at some point, I came out of the shock of so many things happening at once, and it finally hit me what they'd done. And just how ugly and dirty this war was going to be...I was the worst sort of unforgivable fool to think that any war, for any reason, would be anything other than ugly and dirty. I feel so...gods...violated, I guess. Mostly because I was half crazy when I built those machines for the Network, and the twins and Zarbon took full, knowing advantage of that. They think they are doing the right thing, but...  
I killed, or helped kill, my new baby's mother...Raditz' mother...my friend. I have to make amends somehow. I have to stop this somehow, some way, before all the images and possibilities that began to prey on my mind today, of all the ways Jeiyce's armies can and certainly will use my Ki-guns, become reality.

Of the three pieces of technology I gave the rebels, they have taken the two non-violent, defensive creations and made them into tools of war…Kami, what will they do with the Ki-guns?

Maybe I'm wrong and too soft-hearted, or maybe I'm weak, but I can't help the rebels anymore. Not after seeing what they did, what I unknowingly helped them to do, on Arbatsu. I've had all kinds of theories and wild ideas about what Kami meant specifically when he told me not to give in to hate, not to give up on people who can think and reason and hate them all for the deeds of a few people. Now, I know what he meant-that my hate would lead me to creating the machines I gave Jeiyce. Somewhere in my fevered mind, I had to know as I was building those weapons that they could be subverted into deadly aids to mass destruction. Aiding the rebels was never part of my mission, and now…how badly and irreparably have I screwed things up by adding my machines to the mix of a war that was already destined to be brutal and vicious? I have to fix things as much as I am able. To find a way to stop all the killing that's about to happen.

And I have to bend all my strength now toward my real reason for living, the command the gods laid on me-I have to take care of Rom-kun and make sure he grows up a strong, good man. He will be the center of my world now, and I'll not fail him.

Gods…those words of prophecy, spoken through the Romayna as her soul hovered over the threshold of this world and the next… "The Legendary is come," she said. Like a-a prophet heralding the birth of a messiah. I won't ever turn away from my true destiny again.

I won't hate. Not even Bardock-I watched his heart break into a million pieces yesterday and all I could think of was how much it hurt to lose Karot-chan and Raditz. Time brings in its own revenges, Poppa always said, and every evil you do you will ultimately pay for in your own misery. Bardock's paying now, just like he did when he lost the son he called his "closest friend". And I don't rejoice in his pain. I'm crying with him. He took my whole world from me, but he's lost his whole world now. She was his whole world. I thought I would be so happy to see him hurt so bad, but it was horrible. I won't become like Hiru and the twins and take pleasure in the suffering to those who've done me wrong. I won't hate Bardock anymore…and somewhere, somehow, I'll-I'll try and find a way to hate Vegita less when or if he returns.

Today, I think I found the answer-the answer to freeing all the people who want to be free and keeping the people on this world from being slaughtered in the process. It doesn't have to be one or the other. It's a new invention. I'm going to work very hard to finish it. I'm going to call it my 'stalemate shield'. Stalemate as in, no one can get to anyone on either side of the conflict that began yesterday and kill them. I can't stop the people who've been butchered and trampled by the Saiyans from wanting the blood of their oppressors. I can't change the inborn and ingrained instincts of the Saiyan people. But if you can't keep people from fighting each other, the next best thing is to separate them. And that's what this new shield will do.

Zarbon came by Med Center today. I met with him in my own apartment this afternoon. He gave Rom-kun the same wary look several other people had given him as I carried my new baby in a baby sling as I went on rounds. I had a full blown new mother's pride and nearly belted Batha for the look of utter revulsion she gave both me and my baby this morning. The twins came down from the villa, not having anyone to cook and clean for now that Vegita's gone, and have been helping out with the added work load of having so many thousands of patients to care for. Scopa knew both of them well enough not to put them in the post-op wards. He assigned them help with all the duties of running the complex that are being neglected since the attack, and let them help with the care of the soldiers who are nearly ready for release.

Batha looked down her nose at Rom-kun, like he was some sort of nasty insect crawling on my arm.

"Did the Saiyan no Ouji finally find your price?" She said venomously.

If I hadn't been holding the baby, I'd have slugged her. I will never, never, never leave my baby alone with that woman.

When Zarbon came to my rooms, he eyed Rom-kun nervously, then noticed the way my expression must have suddenly shifted from icy to murderous, and only asked mildly. "Where did he come from?"

"His name in Romayn," I said, pulling the baby out of the sling so Zarbon could see how beautiful he was. Rom-kun smiled up at him without the benefit of teeth.

"He's Raditz' little brother. His mother, Romayna, died of radiation burns and poisoning. She gave her baby to me to raise. She was…she was my friend and I killed her." I raised my eyes to his and spoke in almost a whisper. "Your Prince had betrayed me. He took what I gave him to help hide and defend his people and used it to butcher two hundred thousand people in their beds."

"Two hundred thousand Saiyans," he said without a shred of remorse, his eyes never flinching from mine. "They are the enemy, Bulma. It is war. The peoples of the "Empire" have had enough. They will die rather than bow to the slave whip another day. Do not tell me they have no right to make themselves free. And do not tell me they that there is any other way to be free of such masters."

"I'm out," I said flatly. I couldn't argue with the cold logic of his words or the truth I knew he spoke. But…I won't be part of it anymore. "I won't build another machine for your Network or help you in any way. I quit."

He was silent. "What will you do when Vegita returns home and tells you that tomorrow he goes to purge of world of two billion people? Will you keep silent and let them die?"

"No," I whispered, beginning to shake. Of course I wouldn't. I…

"You say you are out, love," he said gently. "But your own moral conscience will draw you back in when it is time to do the right thing. And the baby…"

"What about my baby?" I said tensely.

"Vegita will take him away from you when he returns, or when it suits his whim-he agreed to you keeping the boy, didn't he? He'll use the cub to control you, and when the child reaches his forth year, he'll take him away from you and stick him in the children's barracks-and the next time you see this little face, he'll be a hardened killer-"

"Shut up!" I screamed. "Shut up!"

"I'm not saying this to hurt you, love," he said gently. "I…I don't want you to live in this dream world that you will be allowed to keep this child and raise him to manhood as things stand now. I don't want to see you lose another child and perhaps your mind as well."

"Then take me the hell out of here!" I screamed at him. "Take me with you when you go to Jeiyce! Take my baby where he won't have to grow up Saiyan, and can just be himself! Jeiyce-"

"Jeiyce will not have you, love," he said softly. "He doesn't know the name or identity of the 'mastertech' who built the things I brought him. I haven't told him because I doubt he'd have taken so much as a bread crumb from your hand if he knew who you were."

"W—what?"

"Bulma," he said. "You are Raditz' widow."

I went cold, my stomach roiling into knots. Kami…I had never…never

thought… Raditz, who had murdered Jeiyce's father, his son, his wife. "And…and that's why you never took me away, even though it would have been so much easier for me to work in peace somewhere else."

"Jeiyce knows about you," Zarbon said grimly. "But only that you are spying for the Network and that your warning saved Shikaji. He knew the whole story of how Radtiz was betrayed and slain by his Prince, how Raditz tried to leave Vegita-sei for your sake. And that you were taken by the Prince after the deaths of your man and son, to be his whore. Do you know what he said when he heard this tale?

Jeiyce said that this was another debt Vegita owed him, because he would have dearly loved to pay Raditz back in kind for the deaths of his wife and son."

I made a soft moan, shaking from head to toe. There was nowhere to run and there never had been. The man I had seen as…as the heroic revolutionary was an enemy to me, and would have killed me and Karot-chan simply because we were Raditz' family. Zarbon reached out and took my hand, forcing me to look up at him. "I can't take you to him. Even now, you wouldn't be safe. After Shikaji, Jeiyce thinks of you as a victim of both Raditz and Vegita, and a loyal spy of the Network, he still…it would be dangerous to have you near him. And little Romayn's life would not be worth spit on a rebel base."

"Jeiyce is like…he's like the twins and Hiru," I murmured faintly.

"He's not the man he was before Corsaris fell," Zarbon agreed bleakly. "We're most of us a little mad in the Network. It goes with the territory of having lost everything you ever loved. Sometimes I think I'm the unlucky one, to still be stone cold sane." He paused thoughtfully. "Listen carefully, love. One does not quit the Network under ordinary circumstances. It is not allowed…but you are in an unusual position because of your anonymity as Jeiyce's weapon builder." I flinched visibly at the term, but he didn't notice. "I will tell my Prince you are working on something that will take a great deal of time. If need be, I will tell him his secret mastertech has died. As of now, you are on hold as a spy in Vegita's house. Should he return in one piece-and I will say only that there is in the works a plan to see that he does not-bring me what information you come by that will stop another Corsaris. I will trust your own conscience that you will do so. Otherwise, you are out. The unbendable policy is that no one leaves the Network. So, do not tell the twins, any of the other operatives, or Hiru that you are out. They will kill you if they know…even Hiru. If the twins ask what manner of engine you are working on now, tell them that you are building it in Med Center, and Zarbon has ordered you not to speak of the details to anyone."

"Thank you," I said with effort. I could feel tears pressing at the corners of my eyes.

"You have earned special consideration. You've done more for the rebellion that anyone I know of besides Jeiyce himself," he said. "And…and Scopa loves you. I will pray to the gods of justice that when this war is won, you and this child leave Vegita-sei and live long, happy lives."

The last person I saw today, before coming back to my rooms, was Hiru. He told me…he said he was glad about Rom-kun. And not to listen to the twins. They hadn't known Raditz and would never understand that he, and all his kin, were not like the rest of their kind.

"Raditz would have freed us if he could have." His dead, lifeless black eyes seemed to warm as he looked down at the baby. He reached out tentatively and Rom-kun gripped his finger. "I came upon Bardock-san early this morning as he was taking Romayna-san to burn her in the mountains of Turrasht. His did not see me…he was weeping like a child. Raditz-sama told me once that his parents were mated when they were fourteen or fifteen years. All their lives. I…" His voice had grown thick. "He is not a good man, but he is a man. Not a beast. I-I think I was dead inside, Bulma. Like a husk full of nothing but poison and hate. I think…I think I am coming back to life. I have you and Bardock to thank for that. All those soldiers who died yesterday didn't bring back our families, did they?"

"No," I said hoarsely. "It didn't."

"What we're doing is right," he said. "I believe that. But I won't take anymore joy in it unless the enemy is my personal enemy. Prince Vegita killed my family and yours. This child did not. And his brother would have freed Noira, Dusca and myself had we escaped. I won't forget that again." He smiled faintly at Rom-kun who was regarding him with a wide gummy grin. "Look how he smiles. He's so unlike a normal Saiyan babe. Just like Karot-chan. They favor each other."

"They do," I said softly.

It stuck me like a falling rock. An idea that was so simple and gentle in it's simplicity. I told him my idea and he swallowed hard and nodded. We crept down to the incu ward to find it utterly deserted because of the need in the trauma wards. There wasn't a great deal of care needed from the tech attendants. The machines fed and watered the growing fetuses and prepped the viable infants for emergence at what would normally be about one year old. Then they went to the infant barracks to learn how to kill if they were strong, or to the pod seeding unit if they were not. Not that any of them needed to be taught how to kill after a year in the infant conditioning unit. The babies in the incu-pods were left to grow and develop and nothing else, but when they were shifted over to the infant conditioning unit, they were given a constant bombardment of subliminal aggression tapes for a solid year. By the time the babies emerge from that first year of conditioning, they are like tiny, feral wolverines. They bite and claw and will try to tear each other to pieces if you set them down together. They won't except or give affection. They have what the psychologists on Chikyuu would have called disaccosiative disorder, or something very close to it. After that, they go the first year barracks to have discipline beaten into them, but they do not need to be encouraged or shown how to kill.

I had known this was going on, but had only ever read about it in med texts.

I'd never assisted in it and had told myself that was enough. No more. I'll be goddammed if I'll ever stand by again and let something awful happen without raising a hand to try and stop it.

Hiru and I spent the entire night reprogramming the infant conditioning unit in such a way that the tech attendants wouldn't notice a difference.

"They'll sure as hell notice it when they pulled this crop of babes out and they don't get bitten once," Hiru said worriedly. "I hope…Bulma, we may be signing these children's death warrants by changing their programming."

I shook my head. "It won't change their inborn will to fight. Saiyan parents have the right to train there own children from viability, if they want. They usually don't want to, but I wonder how much of that is the fucking infant conditioning shorting out the maternal instinct in the girls. Romayna was trained at home, and so was Raditz. It's the custom in back country Turrasht. They both went to the children's barracks at four and made excellent warriors, but…that's maybe the biggest part of what made them different. And even those children who go through the conditioning program, like Bardock, are capable of love."

"What are you replacing the aggression files with?" He asked nervously.

I smiled. "Songs…and stories about heroes defeating evil witches and monsters. It's one of Scopa's data disc of toddler sing-alongs and Madrani fairy tales."

He began to laugh softly. He sounded, for the first time since I'd come to Med Center, like the man who had been my friend in Turrasht.

Hi. It's…well, it's been about four and a half months since my last entry.

Let me start where I left off.

Hiru and I left the incu ward and said our goodnights. I went back to my apartment and he went to help with the load in of his freight flyer. He had to take deliver ship components to an assembly plant in the east. I made that last entry in this diary, hid the mike and data disc in the compartment I designed for it in my bedroom, then I crawled into bed with Rom-kun beside me, thinking it was nice to sleep alone. Or to just sleep a full night. As Vegita's pleasure slave, I had to exist on his sleep schedule of about two to three hour a night-that's about all he needs, and if he was awake, I sure as hell would be too. I could have slept after he left for the day, but at the villa, I was always busy building, and then when I started to work at Med Center, I was there all day. So, I've just learned to exist on less than three hours of sleep most nights.

A couple of hours before dawn, Rom-kun woke for no reason and began to wail. Nothing I could do would quiet him. I fumbled through the mini-cooler beside the bed and found it empty of formula. "Dammit," I said blearily and threw on the clothes I'd worn the night before, hefting Rom-kun on one hip as we stumbled sleepily down the corridors to the kitchens in the residential wing. No luck. There was no food in any of the fridges after the double all nighter almost everyone had pulled since the attack. I had socked away a few bottles in the surgery wing, I remembered then, for when I was in the middle of the working day.

Rom-kun's wails had not ceased, and I moved a little faster. I hit the surgery wing a few moments later and rummaged through the cooler in Scopa's offices until I found a my cache of bottles. I stuck one in his screaming mouth and he quieted instantly. I sat down in Scopa's desk chair and held him as he sucked the liter sized bottle down like a tiny vacuum cleaner, smiling at the huge, contented burp he uttered when he finished. He fell asleep instantly.

The door burst open and Bardock and Scopa came rushing in. "Up, girl!" Bardock said hurriedly. "I have to move you and the boy!"

"Come this way," Scopa said, taking my hand and pulling me up. Rom-kun, startled out of a sound sleep, began to cry. "There's no time. They're in the complex looking for you, Bulma! Nachti was coming in from graveyard shift and saw them going into your rooms. When they came back out without you, looking furious, she knew you must be somewhere else".

"No more talk," Bardock said, beginning to drag me out of the room. Scopa led the way through as series of back passages I hadn't know existed and stopped only once to throw his arms around me in a hurried hug.

"I'll see you when I see you!" He said and unlocked a giant shield door with his chief surgeon's pass key. We moved past Nachti, who had been waiting for us, it seemed. She locked and bolted the shield doors behind us as we went into the hanger.

"This way," she whispered.

She took us to a freight flyer scheduled for routine departure and the hatch opened. Hiru's scarred face leaned out of the cockpit. He smiled grimly at

the look of shocked recognition on Bardock's face.

"Bardock-san," he said formally, bowing from where he sat in the pilot's seat.

We flew away in the hold of Hiru's flyer without incident. Kami, if Rom-kun hadn't woke me, I would be in the hands if Intelligence right now. He flew east, not deviating from his assigned flight path, until we were hundreds of kilometers from the Capital. "This is a good spot," Bardock told him.

Hiru popped the hatch in midair and I kissed him on the cheek. "Thank you."

He smiled sadly. "Be well, Bulma."

Bardock eyed him steadily and nodded. "My thanks as well," he said curtly.

After we jumped, Rom-kun in my arms and Bardock carrying me, Bardock growled irritably, his face pulled into an odd expression.

"What is it?" I asked over the wind whipping by us as he flew.

"That fellow," he said, shaking his head. "He served Raditz like a faithful vassal, and just saved all three of our lives. My scouter reading said the men Mousrom sent tonight were more than enough to have killed my had we been cornered. And I cannot remember his name."

"Hiru," I told him gently. "Hiru of Ansou-sei."

He met my eyes, his face a blank Saiyan mask, and nodded in thanks.

He took me to a hunting lodge, high in the northern crags. It was approaching high summer and there was still a chill in the air. By lodge, I mean a huge cavern in the side of a cliff with a giant hearthpit built in the center. I had no change of clothes, no formula, no diapers, no nothing. Not even a blanket. He stared at me as I sat shivering beside the hearth fire he had just lit. "No one knows of this place. Raditz and I discovered it years ago by chance. Those who built it are long dead…I think it may had been used before Vegita-sei's space age. We were cave dwellers then."

"Huh," I said.

"You will not survive a fall here," he said after another moment of silence, swearing softly. "We will stay this night, and I will think of where to go from here."

The night was bitterly cold, and he slept beside me, warming me with his higher body heat. He smelled like Raditz. I lay awake long after he fell into a deep, restless sleep, kissing my sleeping baby, wondering what the next day would bring. Then…he shifted against me, and half-sobbed in his sleep.

"Romayna…" he said softly. His voice carried oceans of grief, whole worlds of it. I began to cry, shredding the tears that, for all his heart-broken sobs, he could not and…and I put my arms around him. I don't know if he ever woke completely, but I held him all night, until he quieted and fell asleep. When I woke, he was gone with no explanation. I sat all day, huddled before the fire, rocking Rom-kun, trying to soothe the pitiful cries and the audible rumbling of his empty stomach.

Bardock returned at dusk with a load of supplies. Blankets and food for the baby and for me. "I cannot move you so soon. I contacted Toma, who has spent the day nosing around places he should not be, and he told me that they are looking for us everywhere. The Inquisitor is in a frothing rage. I called Toma from a city far to the south and warned him and all my squad to lie low. Mousrom will try and wring our whereabouts from them when he learns I am hiding you."

"I've heard the horror stories from the other physicians of people they've treated after he's had them," I said with a shiver, popping the top of a tin of pureed red fruit and giving Rom-kun a huge spoonful. His mouth had opened like a baby bird's the instant he smelled the food. "He was Nappa's friend, wasn't he? How did Vegita and he become such enemies?"

Bardock snorted. "The boy has a talent for making enemies."

I grinned wryly. "I hadn't noticed."

Bardock caught my eye and began to laugh softly. "He knows the Prince dotes on you to excess, and will try to strike at him by killing you in some gruesome way. Is it true?"

"Is what true?"

"That the Prince is taken with you beyond all reason?"

I smiled coldly. "He loves me."

Bardock eyed me a moment, then shook his head. "I would not step into that boy's shoes for all the wealth in creation. Gods help him when you are through with him."

"I doubt they'll help him," I said, still shoving food in Rom-kun's waiting mouth. "We should stay here, shouldn't we? This is a pretty desolate hole, but Mousrom won't find us here in a million years. I can tough it out, Bardock. I'm stronger than I look."

"That I have never doubted," he said with another bark of laughter.

So, we stayed. In the day, he hunted and foraged for food throughout the craggy, barren mountains. I found a trail leading up to the flat, weed and scrub brush ridden plateau above our hideaway, and would spend the heat of the day there in the sun, doing finishing equations and the actual construction specs of the 'stalemate shield' with a charroot for a pencil and the flattest stone I could find as my slate. I kept everything in my head. When Bardock brought back dinner, a different type of mystery meat every night, I would spend most of the afternoon smashing the bits into pureed baby food for Rom-kun's next five meals the following day, with a little wild goldberry juice as a sauce. The thermal blankets were warm, but the furs from the skinned dinner animals were warmer, and after a while, I started cutting them into clothing. The most fortuitous feature of the ancient cave-Saiyan lodge was the hot spring in the inner recesses of the cavern. A huge, hot, steaming bathing pool. Bardock told me that when the northern autumn really began to kick in, I'd have to pretty much spend all my time in the hot spring chamber to keep from freezing or catching my death.

This was hard core, cave family living, and you might think it wore me down after a while, but the effect was the opposite. I got a late summer tan that turned my reflection in the steamy water of the bathing springs a deep, healthy golden brown. I…I think I began to realize after a while, that I would have probably had some sort of post traumatic break down if Bardock had not removed me to this harsh retreat. And that's what I needed more than anything. A retreat. To rest as I hadn't rested since Karot-chan and Raditz' deaths. I simply lived and let my mind and spirit recover from grief and pain as much as it could in so short a time, with no one and nothing to bother me. Only Bardock's companionable silence and my beautiful baby for company. I got to take care of Rom-kun the way he deserved, giving him all my attention, and all my love, without any distractions.

In the evenings, I carved a crude facsimile of a chess set, and we ended up playing every night when I was done. He turned out to be a sneaky son of a bitch who could turn an almost complete defeat around at the last minute. We talked every night about all kinds of things. And we argued, also about all kinds of things. The bigger Rom-kun grew, the more it seemed to unnerve him how sweet-natured he was, and how much I held him.

"He does not behave normally," he said gruffly, after I put Rom-kun down for the night. "It is because of the way you are always holding and petting him, not just the lack of conditioning. Raditz was never given over to the infant conditioning unit and he was never so-so-"

"Sweet?" I said archly. "Good? Kind? Loving? Tell me something, Bardock.

How did being good and loving become a sin among your people? I'm not being sarcastic. Your race is capable of so much deep feeling, so much love. All your emotions run so strong-why did your ancestors decide to weed out all the good ones, or at least make them something to be ashamed of?"

He was silent, his brows drawn down and together, making him look like Son-kun when he was struggling to work out a confusing idea. "I do not know," he said finally. "You know, as a physician, about the preternatural speed of my people's evolution. Five thousand years ago, my people were speechless beasts who could barely walk upright. That changed after the great destruction of the meteor which devastated most of the north. The desolation in these mountains around us is result of that impact. Those who survived the seismic turbulence, the volcanic eruptions and darkened skies after the meteor became thinking men in less than a century. We became sentient beings in the space of one generation. We battled each other as we grew more clever, and thus grew stronger and stronger. Every successive generation of Saiyans, throughout our entire history has been stronger and more clever than the one before it. We survived the Tsiru-jin invasion and made another great leap, in power and in technology. We learned space travel after the Super Saiyan defeated Aiysa-sama and led our exodus back to Vegita-sei. The king of the northern tribes, Vegita the Super Saiyan became king of all Vegita-sei and the…the more violent customs of his people over-shadowed all others. The ways of the northern tribes were born because they lived in a hard land that became harder after the meteor impact. They began to fly south and go a-viking for their food and women. To survive, they took on the custom of weeding out the physically weak and the skittish. I do not know when they began to equate all kind feeling with weakness. I was not there."

I sighed sadly. He had given me the history of how it had come to be, but misunderstood the question completely. "If you can think, you can make a choice to be any way you want to be," I murmured.

He closed his eyes. "You sound like Romayna."

That night…I had the first nightmare I'd had since we went into hiding. I was in Vegita's summer house, pinned beneath him as he tore me up inside, as he broke my bones, his breath harsh in my ear, his teeth drawing my blood-I woke with a choked off cry, thrashing about on the animal skin bed. Beside me, Rom-kun lay snoring, miraculously still asleep. I began to cry softly, rocking back and forth in the darkness, until Bardock's callused hands stopped me. He lifted me, drawing me into his arms, heedless of my nakedness and his own. And I cried like a child.

"I'll never get away from him," I managed to choke out softly. "He'll always be with me!"

He didn't say anything, just continued to hold me until I had quieted completely. My head was buried in the crook of his shoulder, my arms looped around his bare chest, and it hit me again-his scent, how much he smelled like Raditz. I didn't decide anything consciously…I just acted. I turned my head a bit and kissed his warm neck, feeling his jerk against me in surprise. My hands began to slide over the hard muscles in his back, one up to the back of his neck…the other down to catch his tail and grip it lightly at the same instant I nipped his lower lip, biting down hard. He made a wordless noise of protest and tried to pull away, but I gripped the base of his tail a little harder and his objection turned to a growl.

He let me push him down on his back, my hands and mouth everywhere on him, his chest beginning to heave with suppressed desire-then he sat up, his arms around me, and shook me hard.

"I am not Raditz, girl," he said with effort.

"I know who you are," I said breathlessly.

"This will not happen," he said, beginning to push me away.

I held on, leaning toward him, my mouth against his. "I know you still love Romayna. I don't want your heart, Bardock. I want…I want to-to make love.

I w-want to be with a man because I choose to! Not because I'm forced to. I want to make love with you and enjoy you and not be hurt." I had slowly wrapped both legs around him as he sat motionless, as his whole body vibrated with repressed need, watching my tear-streaked face. He slowly reached up one hand and touched my face gently.

"I am oathbound to protect you-even from myself," his said softly.

"Daughter…this is not what you want."

It all sagged out of me and I just went limp in his arms, sobbing until I slept. He held me all night, curled behind me beneath the furs, like the clan who first lived here must have slept. But it wasn't a lover's embrace. It was like…like Poppa rocking me in his arm chair after a nightmare when I was very small.

That morning, I rose just before dawn and made my way up the little trail to the plateau of the mountain. I touched Bardock lightly before I left, knowing he had woken the second I rose from his arms.

"I need to be alone for a while," I said softly. "Watch Rom-kun for me."

He nodded silently, as though he somehow knew what I had to do.

I stood on the plateau, watching the sun rise over the icy peeks around us, feeling the chill wind tugging at my furs and hair. I threw back my head and screamed. In rage…in sorrow...in hate…in pain…in all the things I had bottled and swallowed like poison for so long they had distilled into something like a living creature inside me, a black, monstrous beast without mercy or light or anything but remorseless hatred and killing rage. I stood up there all morning, into the afternoon, and poured it all out into the sky and cold clean air around me, until my voice was raw, until I was too exhausted to even climb back down. Bardock brought Rom-kun up to me after I had been quiet for a while, and I took the baby from him, holding him to my heart, smiling and almost limp with all I had purged from myself. It wasn't gone, and I wasn't free of my hate, not by a long shot. But I had been full to over-flowing, ready to break apart. I felt…gods, I felt peaceful.

It's strange, but things were not weird between Bardock and myself afterwards. In fact, they were easier. We passed the rest of our exile together in comfortable companionship, until one day in early fall he came back to the cave after dark, his face expressionless. I knew that look on a Saiyan's face, and the rule of thumb was, the more stone-faced he seemed, the more he was feeling. I waited to hear what he would say.

"We may return to the Capital tomorrow," he said. "The Saiyan on Ouji is lost in battle."

"Dead?" I whispered.

"No…he is merely…lost." Bardock sat down heavily on the ancient hearthrim.

"His last communication said he was in orbit over Avaris, and had gone down to the surface with field marshal Articha in preparation for purge. He carriers and flagship are still orbiting the planet…in pieces. Avaris is deserted. And there is no sign of either Vegita or Articha. Lord Turna, the general's mate, is her moonbound consort…and he would have felt the blow in his soul had she been slain. He says she lives still."

"The Maiyosh-jin took him alive," I said, beginning to giggle. He watched my face a moment, and as my laughter became more and more hysterical he grabbed me and shook me. The hysteria seemed to ebb away and I stared at him, an unspoken question in my eyes

"What now?" I said calmly.

"We may return to the Capital," he said. "Mousrom will not have time now for such a petty pursuit as seeking your death, and it profits him nothing if the man he wishes to wound with your death is lost. We will wait and see if he is found alive or if he manages to escape…though, if I were a betting man, I would wager we will not see him again. Eventually, his father will have to declare him dead if he is not found. On that day…you may chose as seems best to you. I am bound to you as protector by my oath to the Prince. You may dwell and work in Med Center if you wish, or in my house on the southern plains."

In other words, I would be free. Free…

"What if I wanted to leave Vegita-sei?" I asked steadily. And I _would_ be leaving, with or without Bardock. There was no way in hell I would let my baby be taken from me at four years old.

"I would caution you against it for the boy's sake," he said. "A Saiyan child would have a very short life expectancy in the open galaxy these days."

"There are plenty of places that have never heard the word Saiyan," I said firmly.

So, here we are. Back in Med Center. The entire surgical unit threw a little party for me. A weird little party, since Bardock and his entire squad showed up as well-minus Panboukin and Toma's wife Celipa. They were both lost in action since we left. And Totepo…Totepo just dropped out of sight while on a daypass leave. Toma thinks, and Bardock agrees, that Mousrom may have had something to do with is disappearance. That Mousrom took him somewhere and 'questioned' him about Bardock's whereabouts. Toma inducted Panboukin's huge fifteen year old son Tobaga and his own daughter Anyan into the squad to fill up the empty spaces and recreate the squad minimum of five warriors. With less than five to their number, they might have all been reassigned to other squads, patched together from survivors of other decimated squads, to fight beside strangers.

Bardock, Toma, Kyouka, Anyan and Tobaga. Bardock must have known of the deaths of Celipa and Panboukin from his infrequent communications with Toma, because he didn't surprised. But since he couldn't leave me alone or take me out into what was a blisteringly cold and rainy night, they waked their lost brother and sister at Med Center.

They got drunk and began to sing old war songs. Scopa and the other members of the staff got lit and began to dance, trying to coax, cajole and threaten Zarbon to join him. I noticed, much to my overwhelmed joy, that Hiru and Nachti spent most of the night dancing together. I stopped drinking when I was only mildly tipsy and watched everyone else make a fool of themselves. I noticed that Bardock, though he was singing at the top of his lungs and listing drunkenly with one arm around Toma's shoulder, was not drunk either. He stayed watchful and alert all night.

Zarbon wasn't imbibing at all, I noticed, as I moved over to sit beside him. He was watching the odd interaction of Scopa and Bardock, as the doctor began to try to teach him a very old Saiyan drinking song he'd learned while serving his medical apprenticeship in the palace. The other members of the squad were listening avidly as Scopa slurred out the extremely obscene lyrics about a drunk northern tribesman's unnatural love for a spor hog. This was a big hit with them, since all of Bardock's squad are all southerners from Turrasht. Several members of the surgical staff drifted over to hear the end, and the room erupted in coarse howls of laughter as Scopa finished the song.

"What's bothering you?" I asked Zarbon softly.

"It's just strange…seeing the medic slaves and Saiyan warriors drinking together," he shifted uncomfortably. "And it makes me nervous for Scopa. There are several Network members here tonight. And there are Bardock and his company-all of whom will be spending a great deal of time at Med Center in the future because of their captain's duty as your body guard. In this pile of mismatched explosives, the only two people everyone has in common are yourself and Scopa. The difference is, Scopa is walking through this minefield…and doesn't know the minefield is there. And I can say nothing to him."

"You're giving him far too little credit for perceptiveness," I said, holding Rom-kun out before me. "Say hello to Jisan Zarbon, Rom-kun."

Rom-kun made a gurgling noise and laughed delightedly as Zarbon took his finger cautiously. "What did you do to him?" He asked wonderingly. "He hasn't even tried to bite me."

"He never got his year in the infant conditioning unit," I said. "The rest is just healthy doses of love." I told him what Hiru and I had done to the conditioning unit and he began to laugh softly, and a little sadly.

"If you'd done what you did twenty of thirty years ago, we might not be at war today." And with that, he went to collect his soused lover and pour him into bed. Probably by way of the toilet. Scopa was already beginning to look green.

Tomorrow, I will take the stat bag I had Romayna store in a deposit box here at Med Center years ago, and I'll do something I meant to do as soon as Karot-chan got old enough to walk. Tomorrow, I'll introduce Vegita-sei to one Chikyuu-jin golden retriever and one blue tick hound. Every little boy should have a couple of dogs to play with.

I only heard a little about all that's been going on at the party that first night, but I heard enough to know that my ki-guns coupled with the camo-shields have turned the war into a toe to toe face off. Maybe the rebels will win their freedom with my machines, but what will they do with the Saiyans if they win? Kill 'em all and let the gods sort 'em out, I'm sure.

There's no end to vengeance.

Maiyosh Prime stands up to Vegita-sei's advancing empire and is summarily purged. Jeiyce, the only surviving son of the Maiyosh-jin royal house, begins to wage a war of hit and run attacks seeking revenge for his homeworld and freedom for the remnants of his race. One of their targets is a world where Radtiz is stationed, and Raditz vows terrible vengeance for the people he loved. He purges Coraris in retaliation and kills Jeiyce's family. Jeiyce then declares war on Vegita-sei and-And there's no end to it. And no good guy anywhere in the mix.

Somewhere, the attrition has to stop. I can't stop people from hating or grieving for the people the other side has killed. I can't stop them from wanting revenge. But…I think I can sort of…separate them. Create a situation where Vegita-sei can't find them, and they can't strike at Vegita-sei. So, no one dies. Now that I'm back, I can build my shield and stop this. The one thing that's confounding me is how I'm going to present it to the King. Maybe through Bardock. He developed the moon baubles, so it's not a stretch to believe he built this shield.

I have to finish the stalemate shield before we leave Vegita-sei, even if it's not done when Vegita is finally declared dead. I won't rejoice in his death, or be happy that he will probably die slowly and in agony. I can't feel sorry for him, so…I'll try not to think of him at all.

The Network has made an attempt on the King's life, according to the news feeds. Someone poisoned his wine. Vegita's father is lying in Med Center's most secure ward, surrounded by his Elite Royal Guard. These guys are truly loyal to their lord and no one else, because Mousrom himself came to 'pay his respects' on Vegita-ou and they nearly opened fire on him in the ward.

Mousrom has rounded up every single slave in the palace for questioning. Low level warriors are now laboring in the jobs that were mostly filled by Madrani and Ansousei-jin yesterday. Nachti is in hysterics right now, because her son was one of the ones taken. He's only fourteen.

I asked Zarbon, nearly in a fit of rage after leaving Hiru at Nachti's bedside where Scopa had to give her tranks to calm her, why they had done this when they knew what the repercussions would be. "Oh," I spat, "Don't tell me. The means justified the ends!"

"We had no hand in this," he said flatly.

"Then-" I knew suddenly, who stood the most to gain if the King died now Vegita was MIA.

"Mousrom," he said harshly. "You remember we meant to kill Vegita-ou originally. Well…Jeiyce got another bee in his bonnet and decided against it. And now that Vegita's out of the picture, we can't kill the King because that would put Mousrom on the throne…and he is the last person in the galaxy we want. He is a tactical and manipulative genius and makes Vegita-ou look like a kind-hearted old grandfather in his dealings with other races."

I took the King his meds on the graveyard shift, walking nervously through the ring of watchful guards. I jumped in surprise as he opened his eyes. "Tell me, girl," he said gruffly. "Is Med Center as riddled with Red Network as Intelligence would have me believe?"

"Med Center," I said softly, "is full of pacifists and healers, Ou-sama." I held my breath when those glittering black eyes fixed on me with the same measuring gaze he'd given me the first time we met

"Who else would _you_ suspect?" Was all he said.

"I do not know, Sire. Whoever had the most to gain psersonally from your death."

"Clever girl," he chuckled mirthlessly. He already knew Mousrom was behind it. Good. Then… "Do not take another lover until I have seen my son's cold body, girl. I will not give him up for lost until that day."

I leaned forward. "I heard-" I stopped myself.

"Speak, girl." It wasn't a request.

"I heard that Lord Turna is trying to track them through his moonbond with Lady Articha."

"He would pine and die were she slain," the King nodded, his rough voice growing strained with too much effort. "They are alive…we will find them…Whose cub is that?" He jerked his head at Rom-kun who lay kicking his feet happily in the sling around my chest. He smiled and waved at the King of Vegita-sei, something he'd only started doing a few days ago. The King frowned, looking vaguely unnerved.

"Mine now, Sire" I said. "He's the son of Bardock and Romayna of

Turrasht-"

"Raditz' parents," Vegita-ou growled, regarding me balefully. "And my son let you keep him?" I nodded, and he chuckled weakly. "You must have had the boy drawn into your web tighter than I realized for him to have agreed the foster the son of Bardock. I tried to warn him of his danger, but he would not be shed of you."

"He was fond of me," I said diplomatically.

"He was far more than fond, girl," he snapped. "It must give you great pleasure to think of what the enemy must be doing to him right now."

"It doesn't give me any pleasure, Ou-sama," I said softly. Truthfully.

He snorted. "You've gentled that babe with too much affection, girl. He's strong, I can sense it, but…too gentle..." The meds were beginning to work on him. "My-my son was too gentle at that age, before…'fore Nappa toughened him up." He slept.

Evil old bastard. _Before Nappa toughened him up._ I wonder…I wonder what sort of man Vegita would have been if he had…had been raised on another world by other people? I'll die before I let that happen to Rom-kun.

Everything in the Capital is different now. There's an atmosphere of screaming paranoia and no travel is permitted, unless cleared by Intelligence. If you're caught out or away from your assigned building or slave quarter without correct papers you will be transported to Kharda City in the north where the Minister of Intelligence keeps his "torturer's kennels", as Vegita called it. I wish he'd shown his customary lack of self control and just killed the fat bastard in a fit of rage before he left to go to war. It would have been the best thing Vegita ever did in his life for Vegita-sei. I've been back in the Capital a week now and there's no word of Nachti's son. She's sick with fear for him. We've all heard the rumors of what he's been doing to Maiyosh-jin captives in his torturer's city, but he's only ever arrested suspected Red Network operatives before now, never this mass netting of everybody in the general vicinity of a crime against the state. And that fucking monster of a King is just letting Mousrom have at all those innocent people when he _knows_ that Mousrom is the most likely suspect!

The puppies were born today. I incubated them in an excellerated embryonic growth chamber, and they looked like they were already two weeks old when I took them out. Scopa thinks they're the cutest things in creation, Hiru is apparently allergic to them, and Zarbon and Bardock say they look delicious.

I let Rom-kun lay his hands on them and feel how soft they are. The blue tick licked his finger and he giggled.

Rom-kun is not quite five months old and he is already trying to say words.

That's not normal for Saiyan or Chikyuu-jin babies. And that's not where it stops either. He's making noises now when he wants me, babbling gurgles mostly, but there's one sound he's been making that is strange. "Oh-nee." I didn't know why that gave me such an odd chill, but the reason finally struck me last night.

Bardock is my shadow and follows me everywhere I go-which is presenting a hell of a problem with the logistics of when and how I'm going to find privacy to work on my new shield. He even sleeps in the living room section of my apartments, so anyone trying to get to me in the night will have to go through him first. Last night, we played chess with the stone chess set we carved in the mountains, while Rom-kun lay in his baby bed, fretting and fighting sleep. He just started doing that since we came back to Med Center. I guess there are so many new things to see here, he's afraid of missing something when he's asleep. He began making that sound again. "Oh-nee?" He said. "Ohhhhh-neeeee!"

I turned to see he had half clambered out of the baby bed, and got up to check his diaper. "Leave him be, girl!" Bardock snapped. "He does not need to be cuddled every time he squalls."

"Oh-nee!" Rom-kun said delightedly as I picked him up and saw that he had indeed done something horrible in his diaper.

"Do you want to lie out here and smell baby shit all night?" I asked Bardock tartly, laying Rom-kun on the changing table. Bardock grunted, but said nothing.

"What a good boy!" I told my baby when I was done washing and re-diapering him. He reached up one fat little fist and touched my nose with a giggle.

"Oh-nee!" He said.

I went rigid with shock. Bardock tensed, sensing the change in my posture.

"What is it?" He asked.

"Rom-kun…" I said tremulously. "Are you…are you saying, 'Oneesan'?"

"Oh-nee!" He crowed, laughing again.

I told Bardock everything last night, everything Kami had told me. He snorted and shook his head in disbelief, but I could see a shadow of worry in his eyes. I realized just now it wasn't unease at a brush with the supernatural-it was fear for me. Fear that I was speaking madness and had very quietly lost my mind.

"Can you say 'Momma', Rom-kun?" I said as I lay him back down to sleep.

Say 'Ma-ma'."

"Ma-ma-ma-ma-ma," he said sleepily.

He remembers. I know it. He remembers his last life as Son Gokou.

Zarbon is gone again and Scopa came to me crying. He says he knows with the crack downs Zarbon will be taken, and tortured to death. I sat with him all evening, our voices lowered so Bardock wouldn't hear from his post outside the lab. He and I had it out a couple of says ago about his looming over my every move and how I was going to drug him and shove him in an incu pod just to have some privacy if he didn't back off just a little bit.

It's been a couple of weeks, and a lot has happened, most of it bad. Nachti's little boy is dead. The official cause of death was heart failure. She received a one sheet, blunt print out from Intelligence Central Offices informing her of this, and she began shrieking. Hiru held her, and eventually carried her off to their rooms. They've been a couple for three months now, and he is taking care of her-he knows just how she feels. I was sick all day, stumbling around almost blind with the memory of Karot-chan's death, unable to help her or comfort her at all, reliving the death of my own son over and over in my mind. Heart failure. In other words, they induced so much pain, he went into cardiac arrest at fourteen. I can't say any more tonight.

It's been a few weeks. I have been so busy and too heart sick to write. Nachti is…Nachti is a little better. She's not alone, and that can mean the difference between getting through something and letting it kill you.

The puppies are persona non grata in the surgery these days due to their complete incontinence and my apparent inability to housebreak them. They pee with joy, the pee with fright, they pee with excitement. They just pee all the time, whenever and wherever it suits them. I've named them the names of my dogs back on Chikyuu, the dogs they were cloned from. The golden retriever is Baka and the blue tick hound is Yaro. Poppa named them in memory of his grandfather Briefs in the West who named his own dog 'Dammit.' He would shout, "Come'ere, Dammit!" and the dog would come running. The pups are now confined to the garden conservatory until they learn to control their bladders.

Things continue to grow more tense and everyone more frightened as the reports come in every day. The Red Demons have been striking Saiyan targets for months now, nuking them from orbit, or falling on smaller bases and colonies with ki-guns and camo-shield to make them invisible. All my work. All my fault…

No. No, goddammit! I won't take the responsibility for all of it. I gave my inventions over as defensive weapons and Jeiyce turned them into engines of war. Even Zarbon didn't know or decide how the things he brought Jeiyce would be used.

More and more people are being taken to Kharda and the King is sanctioning it all. I have a sneaking suspicion that he's giving Mousrom freer reign with the slaves to keep the Inquisitor occupied with things other than assassination attempts…and because he is grieving deeply for his son and wants someone to pay.

Bardock says Lord Turna is looking for them, tracking Articha and Vegita through his bond with his mate. Everything Jeiyce must be doing to Vegita, the Prince of Vegita-sei had coming to him, but…it must be awful. I know I didn't purge myself of the bulk of all my hate on the cold mountaintop of the northern crags. I can feel it sleeping inside me, like a black, poison fanged dragon, but at least…at least I didn't let it devour me. And make me like the men who have Vegita now.

Rom-kun is crawling now, and by that I mean, crawling into everything. If I set him down, set scoots away and is out of sight in a couple of seconds, which is a problem since he's getting huge and carrying him in the sling all day is hurting my back. He's also decided everything he can pick up is edible. If I bitch at him, Bardock will carry him when I go on rounds, or better yet, keep him occupied, since I don't want Rom-kun seeing the people I'm treating. Saiyan wounded and…and those who survived Kharda and were released because it was determined that they were innocent. The survivors of the torturer's city are…Kami.

I don't want to talk about the kind of shape they're in. Most of them have suffered mental breakdowns in addition to their physical wounds. It's…it's very bad.

I am working for a few hours every day on the shield. It's getting built one little bit at a time, but I can't go faster than that and preserve any kind of secrecy. The whole thing is encapsulated when I'm not working on it, and the only one who knows about it is Scopa. I told him my whole plan and he agrees with my idea whole-heartedly. He agreed to keep the secret, even from Zarbon. It would be very bad if Zarbon found out what I'm doing and why.

I met a new member of the surgical team today. His name is Nail. I nearly screamed when Scopa introduced us. He's…he's of the same race as Kami and Piccalo Daimo. He tells people he's Nameksei-jin, and they stare at him, then laugh as though he just made a joke. Scopa had to explain that to me. Namek is a planet of legend all over the civilized galaxy. The mystics of Namek, who forged magic dragonballs that can grant you any wish within the reach of your imagination. I smiled sadly. No one would ever believe it was true, but…Then I nearly collapsed.

Dragonballs…

They could solve everything if his people actually had a set. Hell, I thought, they might have several sets! Maybe without the limitations of Chikyuu's dragonballs, maybe…maybe they could rewind time, or undo events, or…or bring back people who have been dead more than a year!

"Scopa," I asked in a faint voice, "Could you let Nail and I speak for a moment in private?" Gods bless Scopa, he only nodded and left his offices without a word of question.

I grabbed Nail by his shoulders and began to babble all these questions hysterically. He put one hand on my forehead and said, "Peace, Bulma of Chikyuu." He spoke the words in Chikyuu-jin. He shook his head slowly. "All the arts of making the ancient orbs that had no limits were lost long ago. We could not bring back your people or your child."

"How…what are you doing here?" I asked, feeling as though I already knew part of the answer.

"My god is father and elder to his children and dwells among us," he said. "I am _dohshib senshi_, a warrior priest. The Kami of Chikyuu and the Kami of Nameksei were brethren and we have been told of your mission." He glanced down at Rom-kun, who I held in my arms. "As you are charged with guiding the boy, I am charged with guarding you. I came to Vegita-sei as a member of the…I think the word is 'revolution.' It was the only way to be smuggled onto this planet as things stand now. A fellow named Zarbon gave me safe passage and instructed me to watch over you and the young doctor. As that is my duty within this 'Network', I can discharge it in good faith. I am at your service, Lady, when and as you need me. I will take you and the babe back to Nameksei with me, if you wish."

I wished. Oh gods, how I wished! But…I told him everything, my sins of invention and how they were being used. "I have to make it right before I leave," I told him. "And I know a way to do it. But I need a little more time to finish it."

He bowed like a knight to his lady and accepted my wishes as a command.

There are no dragonballs at the moment, he told me. The Eldest had died after giving Nail his instructions to seek me out and help me in any way he could, and the new Kami of Namek has yet to forge a new set. I guess it was too good to be true. I let him hold Rom-kun and he stared back at the smiling little face gazing up at him, his green features glowing with joy and something that was almost religious awe. The last thing I told him before we parted was that he had a rival for position of protector. I wondered if he and Bardock were going to get along?

The other doctors watch every day in awe and more than a little envy as Nail heals patients. He doesn't practice conventional medicine, he has a special healing

power. He can lay his hands on someone and erase their wounds. Scopa is almost dizzy with joy to have him at Med Center. The only thing that keeps him from being a complete miracle worker is that he's giving his ki over to heal and it exhausts him after the third or forth patient. But he's saved a lot of people. No tension between him and Bardock at all. Nail lets Bardock do his shadow thing while he scans for wrongful intent in the minds of the people around me and in the general area. He's a powerful telepath, and the thought that he will see trouble coming a mile away makes me sleep a lot easier that I did before he arrived.

Bardock came into the surgical staff meeting this morning and laid three names and slave ID's on the table in front of a stunned Scopa. "There are two med techs and one surgical aide here," he said grimly. "All of whom have mates or children who are being detained in Kharda Walk wary around all of these folk. Mousrom holds a knife to the throat of their kin and that will make them faithful and diligent informants of Intelligence. Mousrom is looking for any reason to commandeer Med Center and centralize his torture facility here." He gazed around the room at the assembled staff, frowning darkly. "Do not give him one by speaking even an off hand word that may be taken as sedition."

Intelligence spies, blackmailed into informing Mousrom of our every move for the ransom of their loved ones' lives…

Zarbon is back. Scopa isn't speaking to him and made him sleep in one of the guest apartments. He's been tapped for a 'morale' project authored by Lord Turna-Turna came back to Vegita-sei for a week to set all the affairs of his wife's barony in the hands of one of their sons so he could leave and look for Articha full time. While he was home, he set up this program to boost the morale of the troops all over the Empire. Zarbon's going to be traveling around the entire Empire, instructing the local chefs the same way he's done on Vegita-sei for the kitchen staff of the noble houses.

The dogs don't like him at all. In spite of the blue-skinned pretty form he usually wears these days, I think they smell a great big reptile when they sniff him and they're afraid he'll eat them.

I came up on a strange conversation in the surgery's little kitchen today. Bardock's voice laughing softly. "…was wed for over eighty years, boy. You do not change your mate. You either take them as they are or not at all."

"…just fed up with worrying," Scopa said softly

"It will be well now, I think," Bardock said. "He is assigned to travel throughout the galaxy. It will curb that loose-footed tendency to wander away from his posts and get himself beaten as a runaway."

I backed away, feeling like a terrible eavesdropper.

"Oy, Bulma-san!" Toma was right behind me, and I squeaked, bruising my hand on his armor chest plate when I swatted him. Saiyans couldn't walk and make noise if their lives depended on it. "Did you overhear anything juicy?" He smirked.

The whole squad has begun to take my body guarding in shifts in the last couple of weeks, because Bardock has been busy doing…stuff. Things like finding out who the Intelligence informants are and letting everyone know. It's getting very confusing around here.

You have the straight Network operatives. You have people like Nachti and Scopa who are not affiliated with anyone or anything except their calling to save lives. You have the Intelligence informants. There's Nail, who is ostensibly Red Network, but really only concerned with Rom-kun and myself. There are the Saiyan volunteers who give up their day off passes to help with the steady stream of wounded. Then, there is Bardock and his squad and quite a few others who seem to be of the same mind…I'll call them the Anti-Mousrom/pro-monarchy crowd. King Vegita's musketeers opposing Vegita-sei's 'Richelieu' of Intelligence. The King appreciates their loyalty about as much as Louis cared for D'Artagnon and his boys-which is not at all. He's got his own problems. Mousrom is wedging him into a political and power base corner.

"Don't sneak up on me like that!" I snapped and stomped past him. Behind him, completely obscured by his huge frame, his daughter Anyan snickered.

I hate for Saiyans to call me Bulma-san! It's in deference to the fact that I'm still officially a royal mistress. I'd be angrily impatient for the King to just give it up and declare Vegita dead, if it weren't for the fact that this would tilt the balance of power in Mousrom's favor even more. I can't think of anything worse than that sadistic monster on the throne. King Vegita's an evil bastard, but he has honor and he is, at heart, a ruthless pragmatist. He does what is expedient and what will solve his problems, without regard to anything but the old laws and his own sense of honor. Mousrom…

Mousrom just likes to hurt people.

Nachti and Hiru were married today. Scopa and Zarbon stood side by side to my left, hands interlaced, back in good graces with each other. I was so happy I cried, even in the midst of all that's gone on in the last few weeks. A small plasma nuke was detonated in a Saiyan city in the south. The entire city was flattened. We set up triage in Med Center, on the landing pads, overflowing out into the grassy hills that surround the complex. It was…

I have to stop this…I have to…to make it stop. I never meant for this to happen. My fault…my…

I'll finish my shield and make it better. If Saiyans and the rest of the galaxy can't get along, I'll just have to separate them. I'm almost through with the shield.

Scopa's been helping me in his off hours, and we let Nail in on our little secret as well. Three sets of hands have been much better than one.

Rom-kun is so big now! He's saying all kinds of words. I taught him to call Bardock 'Poppa', mostly too piss Bardock off. He's pulling up, trying to stand on his own. I can't figure out why he did everything else so early, but he's not precocious where walking is concerned. Probably because he's so incredibly mobile as a crawler.

I lost him yesterday and found him and the dogs playing in one of the recovery wards. They were putting on quite a show for the wounded soldiers. I could hear the rough chorus of laughter all the way down the hallway. Rom-kun was mimicking the dogs and chasing his tail in circles on all fours until he toppled over dizzily. I was boo-ed when I came in a carried away their entertainment.

We're back in the mountains, in our old cave lodge.

Last night, there was another attempt on the King's life. Again, not by the Network. He was brought to Med Center again, under heavy guard. He was returning from the 'front', which is on all sides of Vegita-sei these days, when his ship exploded just above the upped atmosphere. Somehow, he miraculously made a power dive into the breathable air below before he lost consciousness. He'll be fine, he just needs about a day in a tank.

Nail was called in to assist in removing the shrapnel from the King's body, using Nails's power to re-knit each open wound as Scopa extracted each hunk of metal. Bardock and I sat in the surgical ward's kitchen all night after my shift was over, waiting to hear for sure that the King would be well, and we would not wake up tomorrow to the beginning of the reign of Mousrom the First. About five minutes after Scopa called us on the comm to say all was well, Bardock jumped up with a low growl.

"Out the back way through post-op, girl! Move!"

I turned and what I saw behind me sent me completely dumb with horror. Mousrom of Intelligence was walking toward us from post-op. And…oh Kami…he was holding my baby. I vaguely sensed that other soldiers, Intelligence soldiers, were coming through the door in front of us that led to the recovery ward. Mousrom had Rom-kun in one arm and something else in the other…he raised it and fired past me, dropping Bardock in his tracks. It was a ki-gun.

"The weapons of the enemy we've gathered have proved very useful," Mousrom said, lumbering toward me. I went mad. I ran at him shrieking Rom-kun's name…Rom-kun, who was hanging in his huge meaty hand, limp and lifeless, just like…just like…

Two huge soldiers pulled me off of him, holding my arms while he stood there smiling at me, an oily, sickening grin. "The cub is alive, woman. I have no interest in him other than as a useful tool to draw you out of hiding had you proved elusive again." He lay my baby down on the meal table and seemed to forget about him.

"W-why?! Ve-vegita is…" I was hyperventilating, almost dizzy with relief that Rom-kun was alive, only unconscious. "Why?"

"Vegita is lost? Is that what you mean to say? So why bother with you?" He smiled. "I have received convincing evidence that he is alive. Turna is a fool, but a persistent one. He is closing in on their position and it is possible the Prince will be rescued in a matter of weeks, if not days. My intelligence leads me to believe that he will be…in a bad way, when he is found. I wish to give him a home-coming present." He stepped forward, his rancid breath on my face as he leaned down and leered at me. "Your soiled, mutilated body, woman." I could hear Bardock on the floor, cursing weakly, as Mousrom raised one huge hand and gripped one of my breasts with bruising force. "Are you a fighter, girl?" He said thickly. "I will wager you are."

The room exploded. Zarbon was through the door and whirling through the men behind me, tearing them to pieces with a harsh, reptilian roar of rage. Then…everything stopped. It was over just like that. Toma and Kyouka came barreling through the door, almost running down Scopa, Hiru and Nachti had arrived from somewhere, and I ran to pick up Rom-kun's limp little body and began to wail. He was fine. Not even a bump on the head.

The bodies of Mousrom and his men were lying sprawled on the floor, their eyes open and catatonic-all of them, of course, except for the two who had been holding me. Zarbon had killed them. Toma helped Bardock to a groggy stance, and the room went silent, everyone's eyes on Nail.

"What the hell did you do to them?" Zarbon asked softly.

"I put them to sleep," he said calmly. "It's part of my telepathic ability."

"Well…" Toma said slowly. "Let's see that they never wake up."

"We can't," Bardock said weakly. He sounded as though the words tasted bad in his mouth. "He is…in the Prince's absence, he is needed desperately."

"Could we…" Hiru suggested tentatively. "Could we make it look as though he came here to kill the King? We have to do something, Bardock-san. He will kill us all for having crossed him."

"No," said Nail firmly. "I will make them forget they were ever here. We can remove them and leave them elsewhere. They will have no memory of this night's visit and it will be several hours after they wake before they remember that they meant to come take Bulma-san and did not."

"We can pour wine all over them to explain the memory loss," Zarbon said thoughtfully. "Can you add memories as well as take them, Nail?"

"I can put the suggestion of a…I think the word is 'bender', in their minds," Nail said. "The others can help me in this, Bardock-san. Take Bulma-san and the child and go."

I had time to say goodbye to everyone this time, and to pack a lot of things that I'll need since it's not yet summer and it would be killing cold in those mountains.

"You're one strong son of a bitch, Rashia-jin," Toma was saying to Zarbon as we left.

"Don't let it get out," Zarbon said with a casual wince that was completely counterfeit . "I like being a chef, not some nobleman's sparring partner. And killing a Saiyan, any Saiyan, is my death sentence."

"I didn't see a thing," Toma chuckled.

After we arrived at the lodge and settled in for the night, Bardock turned to me with a glowering frown. "He is a dangerous man."

"Zarbon?" I asked, perfectly expressionless. "He killed those men to save-"

"Not the Rashia-jin. I knew he was masking a high fighting power. His kind, what is left of them, are a naturally strong race. The other-Nail." He shook his head. "A man who can go into another's mind and reorder it at will is to be feared.

He could…he could do almost anything with that power."

"But he doesn't," I said softly. "He's a pacifist and a healer. Do you know why he left Mousrom and his men alive? He's never killed anyone in his life."

And Bardock nodded, satisfied.

I went to sleep, hoping Scopa would take good care of my dogs.

It's two weeks later. They found Vegita. He's alive. Toma contacted Bardock to tell him. Tomorrow we're going back to the Capital. I would scream at Bardock and beat him senseless if I thought it would do any good. But he's oathbound to deliver me to his Prince unharmed. Tomorrow I go back to being a slave. I'll…Kami, I'll have to-to leave Rom-kun at Med Center every night from now on, because Vegita said he wouldn't have the son of Bardock living under his roof. I-I-I'll kill him before I let him take my baby away from me.

All my fear have probably been for nothing.

Scopa and Nail tended Vegita, and Nachti and I…we took care of Articha. I almost lost it once or twice while we were treating her. They…they used her as a garrison whore, weakened by Ki-dampers built into her cell so she couldn't fight back. I think I was wrong. On the island…I thought it was worse because Vegita had no hate for me personally-he just saw me as a toy, not a person. I saw as I was treating her that it would have been far, far worse to be in the hands of someone who hated me and meant to hurt me for revenge. We treated her for malnutrition and we broke and reset bones that had been shattered and allowed to heal wrong. Turna hovered beside us the entire time, his face pulled into such wrenching horror and grief I couldn't look at him. Articha looked up at his face, anchored to sanity, I think, by the love she felt flowing through the moonbond that let him track her halfway across the galaxy. Gods…what must he have felt from her?

"I will not die, beloved," she said in a hoarse whisper. "I will not."

"Do not tarry for my sake," he whispered, his voice broken. "If you wish to die, we will enter the Halls of War hand in hand."

"Don't…" I said softly, meeting her eyes. Mine were full of tears.

She snarled softly and bared her teeth at me in weak rage. If she'd had the strength to sit up, she would have tried the kill me. "You dare pity me, you blubbering little weakling! You know nothing of honor or pride!" She broke off with a sobbing growl, turning her head away. Turna was glaring daggers at me, but he made no move to strike me. Something in the way he looked at me told me he was well aware of who I was, and knew better than to raise a hand to me. "You do not know…" she whispered.

"Yes, I do," I said, just as softly. She slowly turned back to scan my face and I saw recognition dawn in her face. She was not a pretty woman, but she was handsome in a tall, strong-boned way many Saiyan men would find beautiful, even with the old scar that ran down one side of her face. I knew she must be well past a hundred years old, but she looked somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty-five in human terms. And suddenly she looked…like a light had been thrown on in her head. It was the same startled expression Vegita had worn when he made the mental connection between Jeiyce beating him half to death and his hurting me. She looked stunned, that same look of dull, dawning horror playing around her eyes. And I knew that, if she decided to live, Vegita-sei-in particular, the pleasure slave trade-would never look the same to her.

"If you die," I went on, almost in a whisper. "They will have beaten you. Don't give them that victory."

She stared at me for so long I began to feel as though my eyes were watering. Then she nodded once, a short military snap of her head. "Put me in the tank, girl."

We put her in the tank for the rest of the night and then Turna wrapped her sleeping body in a blanket and flew her back to their country estate to recover.

He gave me a nod that was almost a half bow. "You have my undying thanks…Bulma-san."

Nachti slumped down the wall of the regen tank controller after he left. "I thought we were both dead back there. Was I hallucinating, or did the one of the highest peers in the Empire just call you 'Bulma-san'? If you had balls, I'd tell you they were made of ardantium."

And if neither Articha or Turna had recognized me, I think Turna would have killed us both to keep word of what was done to his wife from getting beyond the treatment room. Both Vegita and Articha were brought into Med Center in such a state of heightened security and secrecy, no one other than the four of us who treated them was allowed into the surgical section of the complex. I think the King would have killed both Scopa and Nail as well, except he knew how greatly Med Center needed Scopa and was mildly awed as he watched Nail lay hands on Vegita and heal the bulk of his injuries with a touch.

Nachti went to join Hiru in their apartment. He hadn't slept a wink, waiting up for her all night. I went back to my rooms, and waited up with Bardock for word about Vegita. And hour later, Scopa beeped me to come to the special recovery unit. Bardock trailed along behind me, silent and in a posture of military attention, refusing to stay.

Scopa met us outside the door of post op. "I need your help with him, Bulma."

"Why," I said softly, coldly, "would you even ask me, Scopa?"

"Because you took the physician's oath," he said, his face hardening. "Because it is the decent thing to do. Because his father dubbed me a miracle worker when I saved the Prince after Shikaji, and I cannot do this without your help." And Scopa's life depended on his success.

"Tell me," I said.

Scopa told me. Jeiyce has had him for six months. Six months. They did one hell of a job on him. For half a year, they tortured Vegita in an atmosphere of complete sleep deprivation, and in the end…Jeiyce broke him. Broke his will and broke his mind. When his father found him in that black cell on Avani Trice, Vegita was mad. Mad. He woke twice while they were treating him and began to cry for Nappa Sensei and his father to make them stop hurting him. Then he saw the hypo in Scopa's hand and shrieked in terror like a child until they sedated him.

The King fixed both of us with a baleful, murderous look as we entered the little post-op. Vegita was lying unconscious on a pallet, covered in thermal blankets. He seemed to be thrashing restlessly, muttering and half-sobbing in his sleep.

"What is this low born bastard doing here, girl?!" The King growled ominously.

"I am oathbound to Vegita-ouji to be her guard wheresoever she goes, Ou-sama," Bardock said, his back rigid. He bowed low, down on one knee. "I cannot leave her side or I break my honor, Sire."

The King glared at him, then nodded grimly. "As I remember, soldier, your honor is a thing other men might envy." I wondered when these two men had ever had contact for the King to speak so highly of Bardock's sense of integrity. "Swear on your honor, Bardock son of Radu, that you will keep the crown's secrets in this matter."

"I swear, Ou-sama."

The King grunted an acknowledgment and turned back to me. "No one will see him other than the three of you. I have let it be known only that he and Articha were near death when we found them. The three of you, Turna and myself alone know the full truth." He sighed, a rumbling sound of utter exhaustion and mourning.. "He will either return to his senses or he will not. Do not leave his side, girl. I have some idea of how overly attached he was to you. Your presence may help to bring him out of this-this-"

"I won't leave him. Ou-sama," I said softly. And from his pallet, Vegita stirred and moaned, one hand struggling from beneath the thermal blankets to reach weakly in my direction. Scopa gave me a look and I moved to Vegita's side. I took his hand, kissing his forehead lightly. "Shh," I said.

He sighed, and seemed to relax bonelessly.

The King glanced at Scopa and nodded curtly. "It is as you said. Between the two of you, perhaps…perhaps he will be whole again. Let me know his condition when he wakes, whether he is mad, raving or coherent. I will give him a month to come back to us. If he does not..." A long pause. "If he does not, I will put him down myself." He passed one rough hand through his son's still damp hair, his face like stone.

We took him to Bardock's house in the plains just north of the Turrasht mountains. No one, and I mean no one, knows we're here except the King. The King, as a matter of fact, suggested we come to this house. Which means he knew it and had possibly been here before. I really have to corner Bardock and make him tell me what the story is with him and Vegita-ou-I bet it's an interesting one.

We packed up before dawn, without saying goodbye to anyone, and left in Scopa's flyer, taking Rom-kun, the dogs, all my encapsulated shield pieces and notes, half of Scopa's medical library, and a whole host of assorted odds and ends.

I'm rocking Rom-kun on the porch that faces the mountains, Bardock is brooding inside, and Scopa is watching Vegita. He hasn't woken yet. So, we wait.

He woke this morning during my watch.

Gods, I could have handled anything other than this. If he had been catatonic or raving or incoherent in his madness I could have felt nothing. No sympathy…and no guilt that Jeiyce used my invisibility shields and ki-guns to capture him. I could have remained completely aloof and told myself that was just too damn bad for him.

But this morning, he opened his eyes just as the sun light began the stream through the open window…and he smiled at me. "It is good to sleep," he said. Kami, his voice sounded completely different. Higher and soft. Like…like a little boy's.

"Yes, it is," I agreed, leaning over to feel his forehead. He had run a low fever all night, a mild allergic reaction to one of the nutrition supplement injections Scopa had given him. He still, miraculously, had good muscle tone, the fruits of a lifetime of training, but he had lost a lot of weight. And he was scarred, permanently so, from his neck to his ankles, with whip lash stripes where they must have beaten him like an animal again and again. "How do you feel?" I asked softly.

"Well." He regarded me silently, confusion washing over his face. "Who are you?"

I took a deep breath. "My name is Bulma."

He smiled again, warm and drowsy, looking so much like Rom-kun when I put him down for the night I shivered. "You are very beautiful…" He closed his eyes and slept again. He slept the rest of the day.

This evening, Scopa rested his chin in one hand, the other lightly stroking Baka, while Bardock turned a cho-deer on the spit over the hearthpit. "He will sleep as long as his body deems fit. He's been without it for half a year…goddess. Can you imagine?"

"I'd rather not," Bardock grunted.

"It's a very good sign that he was rational,' Scopa went on. "The amnesia is to be expected at first after so much mental and emotional trauma. The King is pleased."

"Which means we all get to keep our heads," Bardock muttered.

Scopa frowned at him irritably. "You are an ornery, pessimistic man."

The Saiyan laughed out loud at that. His laughter stopped abruptly and I turned, following his gaze to see Vegita standing in the southern bedroom's doorway, looking at all of us uncertainly. He was buck naked. "I smelled food," he said softly. "May I…may I eat, Bulma-san?"

"Close your mouth, Bardock," I said. Neither of the men were prepared for the change in him, despite what I'd said. "We're just about to eat, Vegita. We need to get you dressed first."

He smiled. "I need clothes. There were no clothes in the bedroom."

I took him by the hand, led him back to the bedroom and brought him some of Bardock's things. They were too big for him, but at least he wasn't stark naked. He'd just have to go barefoot for a while. Or maybe Scopa's things would fit him better, shoes included. We had remembered everything except his clothes! As he followed me back into the silent hearthroom, Yaro loped up and licked one of his hands. He recoiled a step or two.

"What is that?"

"It's a dog, Vegita," I told him. "This is Yaro and the one beside Scopa is Baka."

"Will they bite me?" He asked, tentatively sticking his hands out to the animal once more.

"No…they're both very nice." To prove that, Yaro slobbered all over his hand.

Vegita laughed delightedly. "Don't feed them from the table," I told him as I sat him down, while Bardock carved off a slab of cho-deer, looking unnerved. He ate like a starving man, no-like a starved Saiyan. I guess he had been fed just enough to keep him alive in captivity. He finally finished and I introduced Bardock and Scopa, once his attention was no longer focused unswervingly on his meal.

"And I am…Vegita…yes?" He looked at me solemnly. "Is that my name?"

"Do you remember that?" Scopa asked quietly. "Can you remember anything before you woke this morning?"

He frowned with effort. "I…no. That is not a good thing, is it?"

"No," Scopa agreed. "You have been hurt very badly, and you are just now starting to recover. It may be a little while before your memory returns. But it will come back to you. So, do not worry over it. All right?"

Vegita nodded obediently and then seemed to lose interest in the subject, smiling down at the dogs. He spent the rest of the evening playing with them in the floor, after nodding seriously at my stern instructions to be very gentle with them because they were much more delicate than they looked. At one point though, he crawled over to where I sat watching him in mild but profound shock, dragging Baka behind him, who was play growling, pulling at Vegita's pants leg.

"Is he your baby?" He asked curiously, gesturing at Rom-kun, who I had just gotten to sleep. Rom-kun started awake at the sound of his voice and grinned at him. Vegita grinned back.

"Yes…" I said, feeling my body tense up like a coiled spring.

"Can I hold him?"

I sat frozen until Rom-kun broke my paralysis by reaching out to Vegita, pushing away from me with his little feet. And I…I handed Rom-kun over slowly, all the tension inexplicably draining out of me. The man in front of me would no more hurt Rom-kun than I would. "Hold him very gently," I said softly. Vegita held him up a little awkwardly, examining him from feet to the top of his head, utterly fascinated.

"He is so tiny," he said, laying his own hand against Rom-kun's.

He began to yawn around midnight, almost falling asleep in the hearthroom before Scopa and I got him into bed. I followed Scopa back into the hearthroom where Bardock sat, staring into the fire. "I have wished a thousand torments and painful deaths on that boy," he said. "But I…I would not have had this happen to him for my life's sake."

"It's not as bad as you think," Scopa said.

"His mind is gone, Scopa!" Bardock snapped. "He has no more wit than a babe Romayn's age."

"His mind isn't gone," Scopa said implacably. "It's just…resting. Going back to a time when there was no pain in his life. I don't question your judgment of fighting skill. Have faith in my judgment as a doctor."

It's two day's since he woke.

He follows me everywhere and blushes like a young boy whenever I meet his eyes. Kami…he's got a crush on me. Even with total amnesia he's still obsessed with me. He's also beginning to bug the hell out of me. He wouldn't leave me alone to get any work done today. I tried to be patient, but he kept getting in my way, trying to hand me tools and things, and I finally snapped at him. He left with his head hung and…and I heard him begin to cry in the next room. The side storage room I've converted into a workshop is adjacent to his bedroom. At first, I thought I was imagining things. It didn't seem possible to me. But as I listened, I began to cringe at the thought of having lashed out at someone so completely devastated. How much of my irritation was from my complete inability to hate him as he is now? At this moment, he bears as much resemblance to the man I called enemy as Rom-kun does. It's very wrong of me to…to be angry at him because I've lost the devil in my pantheon. Because my devil has been transmuted into an innocent little boy.

I opened his bedroom door and sat down on the floor beside him. He was crying softly, sitting beside his bed, hugging Baka, his face buried in the dog's warm fur. "I am sorry I made you angry," he said tremulously.

"No," I said, touching his hair tentatively. "I'm the one who should be sorry. I was mean to you. I won't do it again." And I put my arms around him and held him.

I think…Vegita is dead.

I think the man I hated is dead and I pray to the gods he never comes back. It's as though Jeiyce of Maiyosh killed him and shoved another soul in his body.

There's a plan, an idea so wonderful, playing in the back of my mind, that I won't say it out loud until I'm sure it is true.

Six days since he woke up now.

He had a…a spell last night. Brought on by a tiny scrap of memory.

Scopa has taken to telling Rom-kun a bedtime story every night. He is something of a scholar in both Madrani and Saiyan mythology and fairy tales.

Last night, we sat in the hearthroom, the increasingly warm winds of oncoming summer wisping in through the open windows, while Scopa told a story from the age of legends, about a young boy who learned to fly. The legend of Sereru, the first Saiyan to fly. Scopa had barely finished the story when I noticed Vegita rubbing both temples, his face drawn into a frown of concentration.

"I know this tale," he said. "Did you…did you tell it once before, Scopa-san? I remember…I-" He doubled over, clutching his head and began to scream. Rom-kun woke with a wail, the dogs set up a howl…and Vegita fell onto his side, spasming in agony until Scopa sedated him heavily.

Scopa sat down at the dining table and took the glass of goldberry wine Bardock had wordlessly offered him. "This is bad. Jeiyce's torturers have laid mental trip wires in his subconscious. That one flash of memory sent him into a sense memory seizure of…of whatever hellish things they did to him."

"Mental land mines," I said, feeling ill. "Like the survivor's of Mousrom's Inquisition." I had a vivid memory of a female patient who had tripped one such mine in her mind and tried to bash her own brains out against a wall. Bardock had begun pacing about the room like a caged panther, swearing softly, murderously. He's completely unnerved by the changes in Vegita and avoids him whenever possible. But I'd not known there was something more to Bardock's discomfort, something touching on his Saiyan honor. He turned back to us with a low growl.

"I hated the man personally-but he was my Prince. Our mightiest son. The Red Prince has tarnished the honor of my entire race by destroying Vegita in this way!"

"He isn't destroyed!" Scopa said angrily. "I was reticent about his chances at first, but he's improving every day at an amazing rate. His first two days, he couldn't even put a jigsaw puzzle together, and now he's solving the cube puzzles I give him to work with every morning as fast as I do. He's started to read the books in my library with adult comprehension. The only reason he seems so childlike still is because of the amnesia-everything is new to him. He will recover fully. In truth, he already has. But…"

"But?" Bardock prodded.

Scopa frowned. "Whether he ever recovers his memories is another thing entirely. He may lose his entire life up this point. He may have to relearn everything he ever knew. Partly because that trip wire he overturned tonight is linked directly to his memory of his past and who he is, and partly because the amnesia itself was his mind's natural defense against complete mental collapse. A half year without sleep, my friend. Tortured without cease. Lady Articha gave the King a written report of exactly what they did to him. They never let up on him, took his torment in shifts. He may not be capable of remembering that without truly going mad."

"The King will not see irreversible amnesia as a recovery," Bardock muttered.

"Scopa," I said softly, trying to rock Rom-kun back to sleep. He had cried for a long time after being startled out of sleep by Vegita's screams. "What was the memory you triggered with that story? He said you had told him that story before…"

"Goddess, I don't know how he remembered that," Scopa said. "I was apprenticed as a child to old Duriru, the chief physician of the palace. The first time I ever saw Vegita-ouji, he was about a year older than Rom-kun. I was about twelve years old. Duriru had been called in to treat him for burn wounds. The Prince had tried to grab the fire in the hearth because he thought the flame was pretty, and burned his hand. Duriru bandaged his hand down in regen swabs. I remember he kept grabbing my hand and saying, "Gold!" He's never seen an alien before or anyone with my skin color. He was…" He frowned sadly. "He was a lot like he is now. He smiled and laughed and talked to us happily. We were commanded to stay with him -while the Royal Guard looked on, of course- until Lord Nappa returned for him. That ended up being all night, because the King beat Nappa to a giant mass of jelly for letting the baby burn himself. So, we put him to bed and I told him a story. The story of Sereru." He lowered his eyes. "The next time I saw him he was four years old, I think. He was…a younger version of the man he grew to become. He did not smile at me."

I went to bed by way of Vegita's room and leaned over his sleeping form, kissing him lightly on the forehead. "Stay just like you are," I whispered. "It's who you should have been all along."

I have a ki-powered, improved ki-gun encapsulated in my workshop. I'll commit my first regicide if the King decides to 'put his son down.'

Ten days since Vegita woke. Last night he had a nightmare. He didn't scream like a damned soul in Hell the way he did before, just gasped harshly and cried out once softly. I was awake, sitting up reading, feeling irrationally snubbed and hurt.

Rom-kun, who is speaking more and more words every day, took his first real steps while I was out of the room. Vegita's taken to doing this thing where he has Rom-kun grip his fingers while he walks behind him, steadying him. Today he let go, while I was in the kitchen. Rom-kun walked five whole steps on his own and I didn't get to see it! Then he decided to conk out for the night on the fur rug that covers the floor in Scopa's bedroom and cried when I tried to take him to bed with me. He said, "Copa! Doggies! Copa! Doggies!" Which translates, I want to spend the night with Jisan Scopa and the dogs. He's never slept away from me once, and I was fighting not to cry, mostly because it would make me feel silly.

I rose up and went into his room, finding him curled up in a ball, biting back the sobs. I sat on the bed, soothing him like I do Rom-kun when he's restless or weepy. He turned over, reaching up to touch my face…and he inhaled sharply.

"I remember..."

"What?" I asked softly.

"You." Even in the dim light, I could see his cheeks reddening. "Were we...Are you my mate?" He seemed almost afraid to hear the answer.

I slowly shook my head, not knowing what to say. "No...we were...we.."

"Lovers then?" It had to have been some kind of physical memory of having been with me. He was blushing furiously now. I nodded in answer to his question. I sure wasn't going to tell him the truth.

"Will you stay with me?" He whispered.

I didn't say anything, thinking the request over. This was not the same man I had hated so passionately. What was he asking me? To sleep beside him and hold him like a child, or…

I know it seems like madness on my part. I had a choice to say no, and I didn't. I had to know. I had to know if this was really a different person altogether, and this was the surest test imaginable. I pulled my nightgown over my head, and he uttered another little intake of breath when I crawled into bed with him, my arms around him, my naked skin warm against his. I kissed him, and he trembled all over, then went still, staring into my face, eyes searching mine. And for the first time I saw a man behind those gentle dark eyes, not a child. I could feel his heart beginning to hammer against mine, just as I could feel my own pulse begin to race, and a kind of…terrifying heat rising inside me. This was not attraction. Not desire. This was…I don't have a name for it. All I know is whenever I think of it now, I begin to shake like a leaf with the memory of its intensity. He seemed to be poised on the edge of a decision, then he shuddered lightly…and kissed me back, soft and sweet.

"Thank you," he said softly. And we slept.

The King is coming tonight to see Vegita for himself. I will kill the old monster if he hurts this son he will almost surely see as weak.

"If he can remember nothing, he is as good as mad!" The King of Vegita-sei snarled at us after Scopa gave him his update report. "He is useless to me as he is now! And I will not have his people learn that he was broken so completely as to lose himself." The rant tapered down into a tired growl.

"He is already remembering things, Ou-sama," I told the King. He glared at me, but I went on, refusing to be cowed. "It will all come back in time." Though not if I can help it, I thought.

"Time is something I do not have, girl!" The King snapped. "Has he even taken you to bed since he woke?"

"Last night was the first time, Sire." Not that anything had happened.

Vegita-ou snorted. "Well, at least he's not so much a child that he's forgotten how to fuck!" I reddened angrily at the coarse words, cursing my fair skin when the King chuckled. "Still as much the spitting hellcat as you were the first day you set foot on Vegita-sei, aren't you, girl?"

"Hai, Sire," Bardock said, "I'll testify to that."

"And now you've grown protective of the boy, have you?" The King said darkly. "Or perhaps you prefer him this way." Goddammed perceptive old man.

I said nothing, knowing nothing I said would help or hinder me while he stood there, thinking seriously about killing me, just as he had done when Vegita was injured on Shikaji. He had taken one look at me and known I was well on my way to winning is son's heart…and that I meant to tear that heart to bloody shreds once it was mine. The only thing stopping him now was the fact that he knew it would wreck Vegita's chances for recovery.

"Will you honor my house and take supper here, Ou-sama," Bardock said formally, trying to pull the King's attention away from me. It worked.

"The King of Vegita-sei," Vegita-ou said dangerously, "does not sup with whores, freedmen, or common soldiers."

"We don't mind, Ou-sama," I said sweetly.

Bardock and Scopa both went speechless with shock, and the King rounded on me again. Then…then he began to laugh, a full, deep sound of genuine amusement.

"Perhaps I will stay," he said. "Show me my son, girl."

I left Bardock and Scopa to get the meal ready.

Vegita had to be introduced to his own father. They sat together on the porch that faced the Turrasht range and talked for a long time. About what, I don't know. The part of the conversation I did hear was Vegita asking his father questions he had yet to ask any of us in the new soft voice he uses. Why can I not remember? Who am I exactly? What happened to me? And the King's deep gruff voice answering each question in turn.

I taught the King to play chess after dinner and the old bastard beat me at my own game! He says he'll come back every four or five days to check on Vegita's progress.

I'm almost done with the prototype of the stalemate shield. I've made incredible progress with all this time on my hands to work unhindered. Vegita has helped out a lot in that, because he keeps Rom-kun occupied for me while I'm working. He will play with him for hours on the other side of my little workshop and I can concentrate all my attention on the task at hand and not have to have Rom-kun out of my sight.

Bardock is getting steadily pissier about that the bigger his son gets. He's told me yesterday I'm ruining the boy for any sort of normal life among his people. That making him soft and gentle lowers his chances of living to manhood enormously. I threw laser spanners and my pulse drill at him, and screamed at him. I don't even remember what I said, probably something horrible. I just lost it when he suggested that Rom-kun wouldn't live to see adulthood.

Vegita has begun reading everything he can get his hands on. There's a restlessness brewing inside him, a sense of his fighting power sort of twisting and fidgeting within him because he's grown healthy again and needs that release of physical and psychic activity. He paces sometimes while he reads, an old style bound book from Scopa's library in one hand and Rom-kun cradled in the crook of his other arm. He can't sit still for more than a few minutes, but I think the reading helps focus his mind and relieves a great deal of the nervous energy. He's working his way through the complete accord of Saiyan history, from the oral traditions of pre-space age Vegita-sei, to the age of literacy that began after the Tsiru-jin invasion, all the way to the present day. He told me he's not enjoying the read. He's about half way through and the histories get progressively bloody and brutal as you go toward present day.

"Read something else if you don't like it," I told him.

"I must read it all," he said solemnly. "I am the Prince with no memory of his people."

All the little boy mannerisms have gradually drifted away. He doesn't act or behave like a boy anymore. Just…like a different man. That idea, a seditious, treasonous plot, keeps worrying at my mind more and more. He hasn't remembered a thing, except for little flashes here and there. The last time he had a small recollection of any kind, he ended up screaming his heart out again, again until Scopa gave him something to knock him out.

At night, he reads Rom-kun stories from Scopa's books of Legends, both Saiyan and Madrani, the dogs lolling at his feet. The dogs adore him as much as Rom-kun does.

Vegita…

I wish I could call him by some other name. Then I could completely disassociate the man I hated with this new man who was born here in Bardock's house. That cruelly handsome face I hated more than Hell itself is unrecognizable now, in the same the way some great actors are unrecognizable from role to role because they rearrange their features and postures so completely as to appear to be another person.

The old Vegita's face was always pulled into an angry frown-sometimes tense, sometimes threatening, sometimes enraged or lustful, sometimes amused-but his eyes always flickered with barely banked rage at…at everything. His face was cruel and vicious and arrogant and evil, like Lucifer after his fall, wicked and beautiful. He carried himself in a pose and hunched tension, head lowered, shoulders drawn up, like a too-tightly wound coil ready to spring. Every move carried the threat of violence and death, like a tiger crouched to pounce. Every gesture was sharp and cobra quick, and he seemed to radiate rage.

I'm watching the man who we call Vegita right now, from my workshop window. He's sitting with Rom-kun in his lap, tossing a ball for the dogs to retrieve, laughing softly. His back is straight, his shoulders loose, the cut and shift of his muscles beneath Bardock's too-large tunic is relaxed. He walks with that lithe, feline Saiyan grace, but easily, as though he's completely unconscious of his body and comfortable in his own skin. He hasn't noticed the scars they cut into his body, a horrible web of criss-crossed stripes. His face…he's smiling, his eyes alight and full of pleasure in simply being alive. His features are relaxed, though he frowns quite a bit as he's reading the last few tomes of the Saiyan histories. He doesn't like them. I know why, though he hasn't said anything aloud about it. His face is beautiful when he smiles. It's strange, but in some ways, this new person is very similar to Son-kun, except for the fact that he has a quick, sharp mind. He's busy filling it up, too, with everything Scopa can give him to read or study, educating himself in an eclectic, round about way on everything that interests

him-and that's everything. The whole world is new to him…

I said it before, but this is who he should have been. Just as Rom-kun doesn't

bite and snarl because he's never had infant aggression conditioning, Vegita isn't a vicious, violent, raping, murdering bastard because he doesn't have the lifetime of conditioning and training that made him that way.

It's like Enma-sama took an evil soul and washed it's memories clean for reincarnation…then returned that soul to the same body.

It's forty days tomorrow. The end of the month Vegita-ou gave us to bring Vegita back to 'normal'. I sewed a special pocket into my dress and lay my

ki-gun inside it. If he makes so much as a suspicious gesture in Vegita's direction, or makes a move to kill the rest of us-which he certainly will if he concludes that Vegita is a lost cause-I'll shoot him.

I…I won't kill him. This new ki-gun is an improved design on what I gave Zarbon. It has no lethal setting, but it takes the target's ki down to nothing and the duration is several days. It'll stun the old bastard while we pack and fly back to Med Center. Weeks ago, I found a broken heap of a small troop carrier in the freight dock hanger scheduled for scrap destruction. I fixed it in my spare time, and Hiru did some creative accounting for transpo admin to make them think it had been scrapped. It's in my personal effects locker in the surgery…encapsulated. It can carry everyone in this house, and anyone at Med Center who wants to come with us. Nail can mind tweak the space traffic control to let us launch and clear the system. Bardock will…I think his oath to Vegita to protect me will force him to come with us. I don't know about his squad, but they sure as hell won't rat us out. Hiru and Nachti…I…they will come, I think. They won't like the company, but they'll both jump at the chance to be free. Scopa will want to stay and do his duty as chief surgeon in time of war, but he'll have no choice since Vegita-ou will order his death for failing to put Vegita 'back to rights'. Zarbon…if we can find him, I think he'll come. If it's a choice between Scopa and his loyalty to Jeiyce, I know damn well who he'll pick. Vegita will come. If he refuses, I'll zap him with my ki-gun and drag him into the ship. If he stays, he'll sit and watch his father with wide trusting eyes as the King delivers the death blow to 'put him out of his misery'. It's so strange and surreal…but I feel the same sort of protectivness toward him I feel for Rom-kun.

I meant to stay and finish my stalemate shield and…and try to put the war on indefinite hold with this invention. But if the King forces my hand, there's nothing I can do. I won't kill him and leave Vegita-sei to the mercy of Mousrom. He'll wake after the initial stun wears off to find himself temporarily without fighting power and with no means of communication from Bardock's house. So, the old bastard will have to walk if he wants to leave the plains. By the time he recovers his power, or someone finds him, we'll be long gone. To Namek-sei.

It's on the other side of the galaxy, Nail says. A planet of legend to most of the peoples in the Empire, and no one knows where it is. They'll never find us if they search a million years.

The King arrived last night and a tangible aura of tension came with him. He ate mostly in silence, watching Vegita closely, asking him questions now and then, listening carefully to the answers. The rest of us didn't speak all through the meal.

I finally beat the King of Vegita-sei at chess. He's pretty much massacred me every time we've played in the last month, but last night I finally won. It was a tense game in more ways than one. We stalked each other around the board, while we sparred verbally. I think…no, I _know_, he's figured out it must have been me

who tipped of the rebels about the attack on Shikaji. And for a moment or two, I wondered if he didn't have some half-formed suspicions about my identity as Jeiyce's mastertech.

He looked like I'd suddenly kicked him in the groin when I claimed checkmate. Then he laughed like hell. And Vegita…he chose that moment to remember something. For the first time, it was a memory that didn't leave him wailing in agony. Somehow, there was no mental land mine attached to it. It was…a memory of his father and himself, from when he was very young. Probably before Nappa 'toughened him up'. For a second, just a sentence or two, he spoke as though he remembered everything, telling me his father would be pestering me for a game every time he visited now because there were only two or three people in the Empire who could match him in a game of strategy. Vegita's voice sounded…different. Again. Not like it is now and not like before either. Not a constant growl behind every word…but a man's deep, confident, soft-spoken voice.

The King looked into his eyes closely, tried to get him to remember more. And then sighed tiredly. He rose and left the house without a word, leaving Vegita behind staring after, with a look that said he was wondering what he had done wrong. Scopa, Bardock and I followed him silently, and I closed the door behind us.

Vegita-ou stalked back and forth upon the blackwood porch that faces the mountains, his face drawn in tension and internalized rage. Though not at the three of us. He was nearly smoking with suppressed hate at the man who had taken the son he knew from him and replaced him with this stranger.

"Your time is up, Madrani," the King said, staring out at the black peaks of Tussasht in the distance. "You will all be spared your lives. I cannot lose two trauma surgeons or even one strong soldier at this juncture in the war."

"It is coming, Ou-sama!" Scopa told his father tensely. "A little at a time. He will come back to himself completely if he has enough time. But he will need longer than a month."

The King spat out a rumbling snarl of impotent fury and slammed one fist into his hand. "I sent a strong, fierce son to war. The strongest our race has seen in a thousand years. That gentle boy in there cannot follow me to the throne. And I will not see him live to be shamed and mocked by his own people!"

"He is making progress, Ou-sama," I said calmly. And my hand was on the trigger of the ki-gun, the barrel aimed, through the fabric of my pocket, straight at his cold, murdering heart.

"It is as I said from the first, Sire," Scopa added. "When it comes, it will most likely come all at once."

The King stood there poised on the edge of decision, tail lashing, his face an inexpressive mask of agony. And…I saw in the dim light of the porch the deep, new lines that were etched into his face, the sleepless circles around his eyes, the gray that had not been there when I first met him after Shikaji. The very thought of killing his son was eating him alive inside. I stepped forward and spoke gently, softly.

"Don't give up on him, Sire."

His eyes narrowed in anger…then in confusion. "Why do you give a damn, girl?" When I didn't reply, having no answer to give him, he shook his head and seemed to growl out a sigh, almost inaudibly. "What is your best estimate, Madrani?"

"Less than six months, Ou-sama," Scopa said. I knew for a fact that he had just that instant pulled that number out of the air. He had told me in a quiet, worried voice just two days before, that he was becoming less and less optimistic about Vegita's chances of ever remembering his life before Avaris. I told Scopa that this was just fine with me. And not to worry about the King killing Vegita. I didn't give him details, but I told him in no uncertain terms that if would not happen tonight. That if he tried, I would stop him. Scopa didn't ask any questions, but he nodded slowly. He believed every word I said.

"Six months, then," Vegita-ou growled. "The equal measure of the time they held him captive." He blasted off from the porch without a word of farewell.

I closed the door to the hearthroom to keep Vegita from hearing our conversation outside, but…he overheard it anyway. Or most of it. I don't think he caught the fact that his father had been seriously ready to kill him. I went into the kitchens and began to wash up, feeling shaky and relieved…and disappointed in a guilty way. It would have felt good the shoot the King. I would have carried the look of surprise on his face with me to keep me smiling for the rest of my life.

And all this…all the mess and horror of this war would have been behind us. We would have been on our way to of place where we could have lived out our lives in peace, and…

We still may be if, or rather when, Vegita still doesn't remember anything in five months. I think, this way, I can give Bardock the stalemate shield to present to Vegita-ou as his own invention. This way, I'll have time to finish it, to stop this war, and still escape with everyone before the end of the six months is up.

I finished the washing and went back into the hearthroom to find Vegita reading with Rom-kun in his lap. He looked up as I approached, kneeling to pull the baby out of his arms. His face was…he looked close to tears.

"He is ashamed of me," Vegita said softly. "That I was so weak. That I let them break me."

I shook my head, speaking gentle lies. "He's just afraid you'll never remember who you were."

"I think I dreamed of you while they were torturing me," he whispered. "Waking dreams. Your face was like a light in a hell of darkness." He was struggling to keep his voice steady and losing the fight. His shoulders began to shake. "I-I want to tell Ottoussama that I could have stayed strong. I could have...no matter what they did to me. If they'd only let me s-sleep..." And he began to cry. It wasn't the pitiful sobs he had wept when he first woke, that time I hurt his feelings in my workshop. It was the deep, wrenching sob of a man who had been hurt so badly his mind and spirit had come near to crumbling and dying.

This was what I had wanted. To see him humbled. To see him utterly devastated and stripped of his pride. To see him hurt as bad as he had hurt me. But…He wasn't the same man. We are who we are, but our experiences and teaching shape how we think and behave, and all he's ever know is myself, Bardock, Scopa and Rom-kun. There are no sins on his head as he is now.

I put my arms around him and held him as he cried. "There's no shame in it."

I whispered against his cheek. "Everyone has a breaking point, where their strength and will just gives out. We're all just flesh and blood...not gods."

He drew back, searching my face. "Am I such a fool now? Is that why you don't want me? Because I am...not as I was. Not whole?"

Of course he wouldn't understand why…but something in him had seen the way I was still shy about any casual physical contact with him since that one night I had spent in his bed. I still can't think of the memory of how I wanted him and not tremble.

"I do want you, Vegita," I said softly, kissing him. But he pushed me back gently. His eyes were dark and damp, but clear and…I saw something in them, a flicker of his father's almost unnatural perceptiveness.

"No...You-your body wants me. But...you don't. Or you wish you didn't. I do not understand it."

Now, he was holding me as I began to shake, as my eyes began to fill. He had seen it, that over-powering…_feeling_ I had felt the night I slept beside him, when my bare skin had met his. He had seen it and put a name to it, and given me an explanation I hadn't been able to find inside myself. It was the conflict of the opposing emotions, churning in my mind and heart like water and pure magnesium. Some part of me had sensed at that first touch that reaction of mixing so much hate and…and any kind of emotion other than platonic would tear me to pieces from the inside. I had only purged the surface of my rage for the man he had been when I stood and screamed my throat raw on that mountaintop in the north. What lay beneath…oh gods, the pitiless, sunless, merciless hate that lay in the dark, submerged depths of my heart would turn inward and eat me alive like cancer if I began to care for him in this way. He knew, he could sense, that the fault lay with him. He was right, but for the wrong reasons.

"You're not a fool. And you are whole. You're just...you. As you would have been left to follow your own nature. You're the good man you might have been, if you hadn't been raised to be a-Oh Kami! I wish I had met you first! I think I could have loved you more than my own life if you had been like you are now." I broke down completely then, realizing that…that it was too late. Too late for him. Too late for me. Too late for anything to ever be made right between us. And…oh Kami, too late to stop the feeling that had been germinating inside me. I already cared for this man with no past and no sins and no unkindness anywhere in his soul. And I was…this was going to drive me mad before this long, twisting tragedy was done.

"I was unkind to you?" He looked terrified to hear the answer.

"You..." I had to think of how to phrase a truthful answer. "You were as good as you knew how to be."

He knew I had shaved unpleasant details out of that reply, though he had no idea how unpleasant. He frowned, began to speak-then he shuddered, crying out softly, bending double, is hands flying over his eyes as though he were trying to block out images.

"Where is Articha?" He asked tremulously, his eyes squeezed tight. I suddenly knew what he was seeing and the blood fell from my face. "She is dead," he answered his own question bleakly. "It would have been almost impossible to survive-to survive what they did to her."

"It is possible." I had gone cold all over, body, mind and heart, and he flinched away from the look on my face. It must have been terrible. Slowly, after a moment or two, that black, swirling place in my mind subsided, and slept again. But oh gods, it was still there. I raised one hand and caressed his face, feeling it shift inside me like a black, coiled living thing. "Turna took her to one of their country estates to recover. She won't die. She says she won't give them the satisfaction of having destroyed her. She's a very strong woman."

He nodded solemnly. "I dream sometimes of fighting and killing. Of enjoying it. Even now, when I think of those memories, the thrill of battle seems to sing inside me. I think violence and love of battle must be bred into my blood and bones. I understand them. But I do not understand how a man could use a woman so."

That was it. I couldn't take any more. I began to feel like two titanic storm fronts were clashing in my head, wheeling into a tornado that was threatening to sweep me away. Then…I began to cry. The one act of healing that will wash away pain and rage and hate, or at least ease it. He carried me to his bed, laying my sleeping baby between us, holding me all night.

I woke this morning at dawn, and went to the window, while he and Rom-kun

still slept. In one way Vegita's body is still recovering-he tends to sleep about nine solid hours every night. That's about twice as much as a normal Saiyan needs.

_There is no soul so black that it cannot be shown the way to the light__**, **_Kami's voice whispered to me on the light summer breeze.

This is what he meant. I've had all kinds of theories, but this is the truth of it. I didn't heed his warning against hatred and taking vengeance. And I set the galaxy on fire with good intentions. I won't doubt his words again.

I took a deep breath…and reached inside my own soul, building a prison, a black, unbreachable storage for the black, monstrous hate that was conceived the day Chikyuu died, that slept all the days of Karot-chan's life, and was born the day he died. That grew, fed by the Prince of Vegita-sei, into an obsidian poisonous _thing_ that sat coiled in the dark places of my soul like an evil dragon. I built, block by block, an inpentitrable cell inside my own mind-and I shoved the night creature inside, bolting the door behind me. I don't know if I was awake or asleep when I did this, if a ever physically left the bed.

But when I woke…I felt…new. And clean. And well. The little prison I'd dreamed I built was there. I could feel it, like a cold stone sitting in my heart and mind-but it was buried in a deep pit with all my guilt and doubts, my angers and bad feelings. It was separated from every other part of me, and I was free of its poison. I have to be free of it or it'll kill me one piece at a time. I have to be free of it to go forward with the plan that has brewed in the back of my head since Vegita woke. I have to be free of it to live and not go mad.

Here is my plan.

What if…

What if this new man sat on the throne of Vegita-sei and ruled as a good king?

What if it were possible to change Vegita-sei from the inside?

I wasn't sure it was possible until today. I had to know, so I suggested to Bardock that he spar with Vegita. Scopa readily agreed, saying he's coming to a point where physical exertion is necessary to keep Vegita's health moving toward betterment. He's still not one hundred percent recovered, though he's gained back most of the weight he lost. The over-sleeping is bothering Scopa a little. He says it may be psychosomatic rather than actual physical need. I had to test the thought that occurred to me out of the blue last night just before I fell asleep.

They went out onto the rolling hills and moors north of the house and sparred. I followed to watch, Rom-kun toddling along beside me, holding my hand. He's wanting to walk everywhere now, and having learned to walk, he's wanting to run.

Bardock and Vegita sparred. For exactly ten seconds. Vegita, grinning excitedly, his body falling into a martial ready pose of its own accord, launched himself at Bardock and laid him out with one punch.

"POW!" Crowed Rom-kun. He began to laugh and jump up and down. "Edeeta pow-ed Poppa!"

"Disloyal brat," Bardock muttered, sitting up and wiping the blood from his mouth.

Vegita stood several feet away, motionless, his face pale. Slowly, he walked over to where Bardock sat and knelt beside him, biting his lip. "I-I am sorry, Bardock-san."

"I was a fool not to consider how strong you must be now," Bardock said with a wry smirk.

"I hurt you…" Vegita swallowed hard.

"You split my lip, boy," Bardock snorted, frowning at the look on Vegita's face. "Do not apologize for besting another man in battle. And do not hold back on me!" He stood and crouched in a more serious ready stance. "Again, Ouji-sama!"

Bardock attacked again and again, and Vegita seemed to get into it and the fierce joy of the fight for its own sake, grinning as they clashed each time, tossing Bardock across the length of the meadow all afternoon. Rom-kun was in hysterics of joyous excitement, shouting, "Me too! Me too, Momma!" Heh…he's Son-kun reborn all right.

"I lied to him," Vegita told me as we lay together before sleep last night. He's still making no move to-to be with me, though I can feel how much he wants me.

We lie beside each other most nights, and never go beyond a goodnight kiss.

But, he talks, we talk, sometimes for an hour or more, about everything imaginable. He wants to hear me talk, to learn about me, to hear about Chikyuu and my parents and-and everything. I haven't told him it was Bardock who destroyed Chikyuu. I'm not sure how he would react if he knew.

"How did you lie?" I asked softly.

"I did hold back," he said. "I would have hurt him badly had I not pulled the force of my blows."

"Bardock's a smart man," I murmured. "He figured it out."

Bardock had figured it out and come to the same conclusion, his mind beginning to turn over the very same scheme I had in mind.

"No one can kill that boy," Bardock said flatly after they were through. He sat down at the dining table while I set it for supper, looking thoroughly exhausted and pleased. "His father will not put him down if he does not remember at the end of six months. He was the strongest warrior alive before they took him and now…Gods! He must be stronger than I would have imagined any mortal could become." He looked straight at me, his eyes suddenly sharp. "You had me test him for you."

"I had you confirm what I already knew." I said. "The Saiyan healing factor

has raised his power level up to some kind of mythic proportion. He's safe from his father and so are we. No one's going to kill him. A thousand warrior's couldn't kill him."

"He does not like to hurt me," Bardock said uncomfortably. "That is not good or healthy."

My face hardened. "There's nothing wrong with taking no pleasure in hurting someone for no fucking reason, Bardock! The important thing is he won't let himself be hurt."

If a good king sat on the throne of Vegita-sei, he might be torn down by his own people. But…if that good king were literally the strongest man alive, that would be another matter entirely. Saiyans worship strength. They'll follow him. And perhaps he can save them in spite of themselves.

The war is going very, very badly. Vegita has begun to listen to the hyper light news feed with Bardock every evening, to the endless stream of battles reports and descriptions of skirmish victories here and there…and massive losses. Jeiyce is steadily beating the King into a corner, beginning to purge strike Saiyan worlds in the heart of the Empire. Closer and closer to Vegita-sei every day.

Scopa disappeared for the day after receiving a call on the encrypted comm I built for him. He's done that several times in the last few weeks, and only shaken his head when I ask him where he's been. He won't tell me anything about what's going on at Med Center, though he says most of the people there have been unaffected by the most recent changes. Mousrom has either rotated offworld or taken into custody every slave on Vegita-sei. It is an 'emergency measure' to keep terrorism down to a minimum, the news feeds say. Third class warriors are doing everything from running agro-farms to cooking in their own barracks mess, to serving as domestics in the houses of the Elites.

The only exception to this mass extinguishing of the entire slave population is Med Center. They need us to heal the wounded. I asked him if everyone in Med Center was all right. He said yes. I didn't believe him.

Scopa's a lousy liar.

Bardock and I had it out again over Rom-kun. He's determined to 'toughen the brat up'. I went ballistic when he used that phrase, remembering the King using the same words to describe how Nappa made Vegita into a-a-

"You are warping him against the bent of his own nature, girl!" Bardock said last night at supper. "How will I make a warrior of him after you've had four solid years to coddle him the way you're doing? He can barely speak, and he is already what the drill instructors in the children's barracks will deem abnormal!"

"That's because I pulled him out of his incubator before they shifted him to the infant conditioning unit, and then to the infant barracks!" I grated out, stabbing the roast boar with my carving knife. "This is what a Saiyan child is like naturally, when he hasn't had his head pumped full of subliminal aggression tapes for the first fucking year of his life!"

"Bulma..." Bardock said finally. "If, at four years of age, his drill instructors decide that he is defective mentally, or that he lacks the normal will to fight, they will put him down."

I nearly flew across the table at him, knife in hand. "Then train him yourself," I said coldly. "It's your right as his father. Any Saiyan parent can assume his offspring's training personally if he wants, right? It's just that most warriors don't want to be bothered."

Vegita and Scopa kept wisely silent during these arguments, but we actually reached some kind of detante last night. Bardock's going to start training him, and I'm going to…I'm going to try and be less over-protective and huggy. I can't help it.

"It's just that if anything happened to him, I would-I-" I stopped trying to get the words out as I sat beside the hearth late that night. Rom-kun was nestled in Vegita's lap and I was sort of half-leaning, half-lying on him. His free hand was threading through my hair with slow, soothing gentleness.

"Bardock would give his life for the boy," Vegita said in his soft deep voice. I wish I could call him by a different name. "He loves him greatly, but he is shy to show it. I do not know why."

"It's a Saiyan thing," I said sleepily.

"Hmm," he murmured. "That is why my father does not wish me to touch him. Would it be disloyal to say that some Saiyan ways are foolish?" I smiled. "Bulma…"

"Huh?" I had almost drifted off to sleep when he spoke.

"How is it that you do not hate my people for having purged your world?" He drew back a little, peering into my face intently. I thought about the question for a along time.

. "I would have hated you all if I hadn't seen something almost immediately," I said. "A truth that most of your enemies don't want to think about. That you're not monsters. You're just men. Very, very strong, and so entrenched in your violent warrior culture that you can't see beyond the end of your own noses most of the time, but…The men who came and destroyed my world…they were friends. They loved each other like brothers, even though they'd never admit it in a million years. They loved their mates, and their children once they got to know them. They were…just people. Raised in a violent, murderous society, trained from the cradle to kill anything not Saiyan without turning a hair. But beneath all that, they were all like Rom-kun. Or like you."

"I am not a child," he said softly. There was a heat building in his eyes, an echo of the heat that seemed to be gathering inside me. The absence of the hate I had locked away did not bank this fire, but it gave it a different flavor and color. It was bright and warm inside me like the sun, not a half-mad twisted passion born of hate. It was stronger and clean and-and-

"No. You're not a child," I said, leaning toward him, my mouth tasting his. But the night thing, the black hate dragon, shifted in its prison deep inside me and I shivered against him. He sensed it…and he pushed me back gently. "I want you," he said simply. "For all that I have forgotten, I have not forgotten that. But…I will wait. For a day when you want me, and that wanting does not bring you grief.

I slept in my room alone, lying awake for hours. Thinking and feeling too many things to speak in a year.

It's done. The stalemate shield it done. All the plans, all the design glitches, and the expansion and generator specs and power needs. Everything.

Bardock came to me today while I sat in the sun on the green slopes just north of the house and watched Vegita and Scopa play a game of toss the baby. Rom-kun was squealing with laughter as they passed him back and forth, the dogs yipping each time he did so.

Bardock watched my face for a minute, than spoke in a low voice. "You and he share a bed these days more often than not. Have you been together as man and woman yet?"

I stared up at him, and shook my head slowly. "He can sense there's something wrong, but I haven't told him why. I won't tell him why. He…he won't touch me until I he knows I want him too."

"Daughter," he said, softer, his eyes shadowed with dark worry. "Do not go down that road. It will be the death of you."

"I'm already on it," I said softly, tremulously.

"If he remembers and returns to being the man he was, you will-"

"He won't!" I snapped, feeling my chest begin to tighten.

Bardock sighed. "I will take the brat flying tomorrow. He must grow accustomed to heights and the sense of the air."

I nodded wordlessly in agreement. But I knew letting Rom-kun out of my sight for an entire day would be easier said than done. Vegita and Rom-kun went right off to sleep the way they always do…the sleep of the innocent.

I'm awake.

Too many things happened. Why…Kami, _why_ can't anything in my life come slowly or a little at a time. I'm tired…weary to the bone of constant, sweeping, jarring and complete changes in my life that take place in the space of an hour or two.

I'm so tired of it.

Bardock took Rom-kun away from me at dawn. I smiled and waved bye-bye, and he said, "Bye-bye, Momma! Bye-bye!" Then he shrieked with joy as his father launched into the sky. I stood there crying like an idiot for about half and hour.

I went into the solace of my workshop and hammered on the servo-bots I'd brought from Med Center. They had started developing glitches a month after they went online, I think because the lines of transport code I wrote for the servos were incompatible with the Med Center computers frame type. They worked very well, but they had to be used on their own little network. I encapsulated them and stored them away after a while. The Saiyan wounded were absolutely terrified of being tended by an automaton and broke them whenever they got close. How can a space faring race be such technophobes?

I stripped them down, repaired the ones that had been thumped by unnerved Saiyan patients, and encapsulated all but one. This one, for some unknown reason I could never ferret out, had always locked up and crashed. Poppa always said that there was a mystical gremlin of engineering that made some individual machines lemons for no reason at all. I went to work on it with a will, but I think I was so distracted thinking about Rom-kun I did more damage than repair. I was muttering under my breath about not being an over-protective mother when Vegita came into the shop and watched my silently for a while. I began to tell him why I was upset, my voice growing more and more teary as I spoke and he listened solemnly without comment.

"You should not stay in here," he said thoughtfully.

"Yeah?" I sniffled. "Why not?"

"You will destroy your…thing," he motioned to the servo. I saw with surprise I had been gutting it while I spoke to him. "Come with me. Outside for the day."

It was a perfect sunny day, warm but not hot, and the wind was lightly tugging on the moors, tossing everything back and forth gently. The pale green grasslands were littered with red blossoms. They only bloomed in moon years, Bardock had told me. The moon, my first moon on Vegita-sei, would come this fall, in just a few short months.

We walked across the moors aimlessly, talking about this and that, mostly his perceptions of the Tsiru-jin historical tome he had finished last night. He seemed to be asking more and more questions about the parliamentary monarchy structure of Chikyuu and how it had actually functioned. By the time we stooped to rest in the early afternoon, my mind was miles away from my worry about Rom-kun. We lay back on a small hillside and drowsed side by side. I felt…good. Peaceful. So easy in his company it was unreal. I didn't think I could enjoy any one friend's companionship more than Scopa's. Scopa had even made the joking comment that he was beginning to feel ousted as my best friend. But behind his smile had been the same apprehensive worry I'd seen in Bardock's eyes when he watched me with Vegita in the last few weeks.

"The sky is the same color as your eyes," he said softly, lying on his back beside me, his arms folded behind his head.

"Chikyuu's skies were this color," I murmured sleepily. "Is it my imagination, or has the sky's color deepened in its blue in the last couple of weeks?"

"Bardock said it is the moon's approach," he replied. "He said by fall the sky will be the color of blood. I like the color of your eyes better." He frowned curiously. "How…"

"How what?"

"It is nothing."

"Don't start a question and not finish it, Vegita," I said a little peevishly. He rolled over on his side to face me, propped up on one elbow, grinning faintly.

"How did you breed the dogs if your world is gone?" His face fell as mine tensed with memory of things and people lost forever.

I told him about the stat bags, about my dogs on Chikyuu and my flowers, all the things I brought back to life from the tiny fragments of the things I'd had with me when I came to Vegita-sei. I began to talk about Poppa and my eyes began to burn, though my voice remained soft and steady.

"You loved him greatly?" He asked.

"Yes..." I smiled sadly. "I loved him very much..."

"Bardock told me," he said with a kind of distant sadness in his own voice, "that I should never say such a thing to my father." He sounded almost envious of me, of how I spoke of Poppa. I knew he had realized quite a while ago that his father was not a good man, though he hadn't spoken of it to me.

"That you love him?" I finished. The King was coming to check on his son less and less often. The last time had been three weeks ago. I knew it was because the war was going very badly for Vegita-sei now, but I wondered if Vegita thought it was because his father was too ashamed of him. "Don't tell him," I said. I cringed at how his father would react to such a statement. "It's against Saiyan custom to say it aloud, or even openly admit to it. And it would only upset him if you said it."

He seemed to inhale slowly and spoke his next words in a rush. "You are not Saiyan. Would it upset you if I said it to you?"

I stared at him open-mouthed, my mouth going dry. I had known this was coming, but I was still unprepared and shaken and…and, I can't even describe how I felt. There was a rush of warmth from the pit of my stomach, a wild surge of sweet feeling, like when Rom-kun said he loved me the first time. And there was the other, stirring in its midnight prison in the basement of my soul, shifting angrily in its reptilian coils, the force of its insane hate radiating even through the walls if its cell like cold fire. And above all this was Bardock's face, glowering down at me with worry, asking me what would I do if he remembered and became the monster he had been. I opened my mouth the answer him with no idea of what I would say until I said it.

"I-I could love the man you are right now. Kami...I think I already do. But-but you won't stay this way! You'll go back to-to the way you were before!"

"I do not think that is possible," he said, caressing my face, smoothing away the tears that had begun to leak out of my eyes. "I believe there is no way back to my memory of before Avaris except through Avaris-through J-Jey-," he stooped trying to say Jeiyce's name, keeping his eyes fixed on mine.. "When I do remember, as Scopa says I shall-_if_ I remember-when I have passed through that hell...Bulma, a man could not emerge from such a thing unchanged." His arms had slowly wrapped themselves around me, pulling my body gently against his. "I think I must have been a prideful, selfish lover to you. That I must have hurt you greatly. I am sorry for that. I must have been the basest sort of fool to have taken your love for granted." He kissed me.

And he kissed me, again and again. We lay side by side in each other's arms, our bodies melting together with our clothes on, like two children making out, for nearly an hour. Heat began to kindle and grow inside me like a slow burning hearthfire after a long freezing day. He didn't push me or pull me or ask anything of me…he just gave. His every touch was light and gentle, his lips like warm silk on mine. And when I drew back and stared into his face, there was no resemblance to my enemy, none at all, and his eyes were standing full of tears from the simple joy of having me in his arms.

The slow burn erupted like a gentle explosion rumbling through me and I almost sobbed his name, want singing inside me like the warm winds over the moors. I began pulling his clothes of, and he helped me pull my dress over my head, and then there was skin on skin, warm and good and clean of anything bad or twisted or hateful or coerced. He was gentle and awkward, as though it was his first time. But then, it _was _his first time, I thought with a smile as I pushed him down on his back, moving over him, hands and mouth touching and tasting everywhere.

"Do you want this?" He whispered as I moved above him, our bodies burning against each other, his hardness to my softness, ready to meld into a perfect fit. I froze, choking on a sob.

No one has ever asked me that question. No one. Not Raditz, who took my virginity so gently and skillfully I didn't realize there was no option to say no. Not the evil Prince, who took everything so brutally and Silenced my lips against the word no. Not even sweet Yamcha, so many years dead now, who always tried to sneak and wheedle his way past third base, but never once asked.

"Yes…" I sobbed, shaking against him. "Yes." My legs were around him, my mouth against his-and we both cried out softly as I slid down over him, taking him inside me, the first lover of my life who was ever my choice to take. I was crying as I moved above him, rocking slowly, and he sat up with both arms wrapped around me, kissing my face, moving with me, his words soft against my lips.

"Don't cry," He whispered, "I want you to be happy…I want to make you happy…I…" He gasped like a drowning man as I quickened out pace.

"I am," I breathed. I could feel the end coming and I knew it would be like nothing I'd ever known. I threw back my head, trying to say his name, trying to tell him that he was beautiful and good and-and the end struck us both in the same instant. We collapsed against each other, shaking in the aftermath, unable to speak for a long time.

"Bulma…" He raised his eyes to meet mine. I knew the words were coming, and that they were the name and declaration of the wordless well of feeling that was filling me up to overflowing. "I love you," he whispered, taking my face between his hands, kissing me gently. "I love you…"

From such a high, precarious pinnacle…there is so far to fall. So far…

He went stiff in my arms, the words still hanging in the air between us. His entire body spasmed in agony and he screamed. I rolled him on his side, my heart in my mouth. He had hit another memory trip wire, and oh gods, we were miles and miles from the house, miles from the tranks that he would need now to keep him from shrieking until he passed out, or worse, asphyxiated. He went on screaming and screaming, while I held him, keeping him pressed onto his side so wouldn't choke on his tongue. Slowly, the wails receded and he went limp, weeping like a child who has lost everything good in his life. He couldn't seem to stop, shuddering apart in wave after wave of tearing sobs. Then he raised his head, looking into my eyes, and his own went wide with horror and grief. He pulled away from me, falling onto his face on the grass, his entire body wracking as he cried. But it was different this time. It wasn't pain that seemed to be ripping him apart, it was sorrow and horror and regret. I took him in my arms again, stroking him, turning him gently onto his back. I reached down and brushed the tears from his face.

"What did you remember?" I asked softly.

"Everything..." He said in a shaking whisper.

The sun seemed to flicker off and fall above us…the whole world spun around and went dark for an instant, and I went cold, all the warmth inside me snuffed out with that one word. He was…_no._ He was dead. He was gone. And here beside me lay a monster, a hated, bestial monster, who had risen from the dead to steal back the body of this man I had been helpless to love.

"Do you..." I was shaking all over, pale as a dead woman, trying to cling to any pitiful spar of hope. "Do you know who you are?"

"No," he said softly. And my heart leapt with a kind of piteous hope because his voice was still so soft, still the voice of the man he had been a moment ago. Had he only remembered everything they had done to him, all their tortures? Was everything that came before Avaris still lost to him? "I am Vegita who went to war to annihilate the Empire's enemies," he said in that soft voice, and I moaned softly, beginning to cry. "I am Vegita who lay six months in a Maiyosh-jin dungeon tortured day and night until...until I was no one at all. I am Vegita who dwelt with you in the house of Bardock these three months. I am...I am all three men...and one. But I do not know who that man is."

I pushed away from him, doubling into a knot of agony, of grief for the man I had loved, who was dead now. Of hurt and horror as the barbs of the black hate dragon's spurs tore through walls of its cell and gouged my soul, drawing blood. Then…his arms were there around me, pulling me up out of that pose of torment, easing the pain with just the gentle touch of another living being . I held onto him, crying as I had when Karot-chan died, when Chikyuu died, when I first saw Son-kun lying still and cold in his father's arms.

But…you can't cry forever…

At some point, you have to stop and wipe your face and try to keep on living. And maybe…maybe find a way to stop the hurt. Neither of us said anything for a long time, while the sun began dipping into the west and the wind and sky continued perfect and beautiful, heedless of us and out little problems.

"You win, Bulma," he said at long last.

I turned in his arms, startled and shaken by how soft his tone still sounded.

"Win?"

"The fool's 'game' we began before I went to war," he said hollowly, his every intonation of each syllable echoing all the sorrow inside me. "When we each vowed to enslave the other's heart. You are the victor. You will not hear me give it voice again, but...I meant the-the words I spoke. I still do. And I know that should we both live until the sun above us burns cold and dies, you will never feel the same. I did not understand that before, or even why. I do now."

"And I swore I'd use your love to destroy you," I said, closing my eyes, trying to think. I looked up at him again, meeting those dark tear-filled eyes-and I saw that he had not wanted to remember himself. And, oh Kami, he still wished he hadn't. Everything in his posture, his eyes, his face, was the man I had loved an hour ago. It was as though…as though the one from before and the man who began life in Bardock's house had somehow…merged together.

"I wonder..." I whispered, "if the man I made that promise to isn't destroyed already. You're right. You aren't the same now." And if the man I had loved was still somehow alive inside this new, third incarnation of Vegita, then…then…

"The man I was two hours ago had your heart, did he not?" He whispered.

"Yes..." I said just as softly. "But he's gone now."

"And now..." He shook his head, tears still leaking from his eyes. He brushed them away heedlessly, with a soft growl of despair. "You could no more care for me than I could take the Red Prince as my sworn brother. There is no road back from that launch pad where Raditz and your son died. And no road away from that island in the Western Sea where we began."

_Is he still the monster with memories of having been a good man for a few months? _I wondered. I felt as though my heart were falling apart in two halves, one full of loved, the other withered and full of the hate dragon's poison. Is he the good man I love with memories of having been a monster in a former life? Was I grasping at straws like a drowning fool? What could I do? How could I reconcile so much hate with the love I felt for the man I had known here in Bardock's house?

Could this new person who was both sun and shadow, my enemy and my sweet love, ever make me forgive and forget all that lay between us?

"Maybe there is," I said hesitantly.

"Tell me," he said, his deep voice full of the same muted, desperate hope as mine.

Maybe…maybe there was a way. A way for the man to make amends for the monster's sins. "Give me back everything you took from me," I said steadily. "If you can understand what it was you took, if you can overcome your pride enough to give it back...then...then maybe I'll be able to see the man I loved this morning inside the man you are now."

He closed his eyes, seeming to convulse with relief, with the shred of hope I had given him, given us both. Then he raised his eyes to mine again, taking my hands in his, bringing them to his lips.

I jerked in surprise as Rom-kun's voice, happy and excited, came drifting over the rolling rises of the moors. We pulled our clothes hurriedly, just before my son came barreling over the crest of the hilltop behind us. Bardock was sauntering behind him, a dead cho-deer slung over one shoulder.

"Mommma! Edeeeta!" Rom-kun swerved at the last minute in his course toward me and leapt into Vegita's arms. I froze in horror, my heart faltering to a stop and Vegita's brows pulled down into a hard frown-then he went motionless, staring down at Rom-kun, his face startled and thoughtful. Vegita slowly lifted my baby up and held him up in both hands, studying him silently as Rom-kun continued to tell him all about his day's adventures. The hard set of Vegita's features seemed to be shifting from one emotion to another in a confused mix as his feelings for the baby in his arms warred with all of Nappa's hateful lessons. Then, his face softened, and very slowly, he sat the baby in the crook of one arm, and turned back to me.

"Sleep in Med Center when you wish," he said in the deep, quiet voice of the man I loved, "or in my bed when it pleases you. Bring the boy to my house when you come. I will not have my foster son sleep alone at Med Center with only that Madrani Scopa to attend him." His eyes met mine, reflecting my hope back at me, and his lips twitched as he spoke the next words. "The brat might be permanently damaged by such company and grow to become a physician."

We packed up everything, dogs, baby, personal effects, and ourselves, and left for the Capital within the hour. Scopa and I in the flyer, with Rom-kun in my lap, and Vegita and Bardock flying along beside us. We were back before it was fully dark. Just like that. I had wanted to cry for the way Bardock and especially Scopa's manner changed when they learned he had recovered himself. Scopa is all formal and professional with him again, his eyes humbly downcast as befits a freedman addressing Saiyan nobility. Yesterday the two of them were laughing together like teenage boys as they passed Rom-kun back and forth like a football.

He stopped at the threshold of the house, the cut of his back tense and almost unsure. Then he squared his shoulders and strode through with the easy feline grace that had marked his every move in Bardock's house. That hair-triggered tension and that had always been present before he went to war, that had given him an almost hunched appearance as it seized his shoulders up in knots, was not there.

His voice was still deep, even and calm. Scopa muttered softly beside me under his breath what I know he must have been thinking all evening as we flew.

"Who is he?" He asked me.

"I don't know," I replied softly. "I don't think he does either."

"Bulma…" He said hesitantly. "There are some things I must tell you about-about what has been happening here in the Capital while we were gone. When you come back to Med Center, if you come tomorrow or the next day, come to me first."

"How bad is it?" I asked. I didn't want to hear the answer.

Scopa shook his head. "Not tonight. I will tell you tomorrow. You have enough to adjust to this evening."

The dogs whipped past him into the hearthroom and he sat in his blackwood armchair, easing into it. He told the dogs in a threatening growl that they would be on the menu tonight if they peed inside the house. But there was no anger in his voice…and no threat. He said in a gruff, almost embarrassed way that they could live here and run wild through the hills like they did at Bardock's. I smiled and took Rom-kun to try and figure out where he would sleep tonight.

I passed through the hearthroom doors and into the bedroom, the men's lowered voices a low burr behind me-and I froze. The bedroom, Vegita's bedroom, was just as it had been. I hadn't slept here since he had left to go to war…and now…

A thousand memories of this room and that bed left me shaking and nauseous, hearing the clink of the imprisoned night thing's scales against my heart.

"Momma?" Rom-kun said, biting his lip.

I looked down at his upturned face and somehow mustered a smile. "We won't sleep here, baby," I told him. "This is a bad room." I nearly ran through the bedchamber to the sitting room…and into the large study I had used to do research. It was just adjacent to the little library, and had a smaller window nook that was almost its own little room. I decapsulated Rom-kun's bed and set it by the window, checking to make sure the casement was locked, then marched back into the study. I popped the bed capsule, the dresser and wardrobe I'd used at Bardock's house, moving things around until they seemed right. I wondered why this seemed so eerily familiar, then I realized it was almost the same configuration of furniture as my-my room at Capsule Corp. How strange… The study has its own entrance from the circular house center that is the hearthroom, so there would be no need to go through that room, the bedroom from before, ever again.

Through the ring hallway that circles the hearthroom, I saw could hear Caddi and Scopa talking softly in the kitchen. Batha was not speaking, which was very odd. Both the twins had almost passed out when Vegita strode through the front door, seemingly whole and recovered.

I stood and listened to Bardock tell Vegita how bad things had gotten, how much power Mousrom had now, possibly more than the King at this point. Then I listened in shock as Bardock and then Scopa both swore themselves, each in his own way, into Vegita's service. Of the three of us, neither Bardock, Scopa nor myself had spoken our thoughts aloud to the other, but we had all come to the same conclusion on our own. That Mousrom would be Vegita-sei's death…and that a good King, the strongest King Vegita-sei has ever known, could turn this world and this war out of its spiral tailspin and give it a better future. Bardock's idea of 'a good king' is probably a bit different than mine and Scopa's, but we all seem to be working toward the same goal.

I took a long, steamy bath, washing the smell of flyer fuel off myself and Rom-kun. By the time I came back into the hearthroom, both Bardock and Scopa had left and the twins were setting the table.

We ate. And again, I felt the unreality of this day wash all over me, as he and I talked, one corner of his mouth curling up into a half grin as he watched Rom-kun make a pudding of his meat pie and shove so much of what he didn't drop to the dogs in his mouth he looked like a chipmunk before each swallow. We sat and ate dinner like…Kami, like a family. The one dark spot on this whole scene was when Batha leaned down and gave my baby a smile that looked like a shark baring its teeth.

"Would little master like some more meat pie?" She said. I caught her eye and she caught mine. You could have frozen bromide with the looks we exchanged. There was no time to settle anything tonight, but tomorrow we would talk. There was no way in hell I was going to have this hate-filled bitch living in the same house where my baby slept.

I led Vegita through his old bedroom, through the sitting room divider, and into the new bedroom I'd created, opening the south window wide, saying as casually as I could that this room was much cooler in the summer with the breezes from the south blowing in. He didn't reply as I lay Rom-kun down on his baby bed, smiling and kissing my baby goodnight. I didn't realize he had left the room until I heard the explosion. I ran back through the adjoining room to find him putting out the smoking wreck of his bedroom with a rush of his ki.

"I will not lie beside you in that bed or that room ever again," he said hoarsely_._

His eyes were squeezed shut tightly, his hands rising to both sides of his head, every inch of his body trembling. But it wasn't a mental grenade he'd tripped, it was true memory. The memories of everything he'd done to me in this room, seen through new eyes. There was no absolution here either. I didn't have any to give him. He built the wall between us stone by stone, labored on it every day for over a year with all his might. It's his to tear down, just as the guilt is his to live with for the rest of his life.

I didn't offer any words of comfort, but I pulled his clothes off and lay him down on the bed. He jerked in surprise as and I saw he had just noticed, for the first time, the network of scars they'd lain all over his body.

"Try and sleep," I said. "Tomorrow's going to be a hard day." I kissed him lightly and he stared back at me, swallowing hard.

We didn't sleep, not for a long time. We lay awake talking, the trembling of his body against mine never subsiding. I had to explain to him what was wrong with his emotions, what he was feeling, and that the guilt was his to make peace and reparation for. Gods…gods…he is, in many ways, still as new to everything as when he woke for the first time in Bardock's house.

"It is _cho-gugol_," Vegita whispered. "Debt of blood and honor. A warrior can only pay such a debt with his life's blood."

"Death is an easy out," I said coldly. "You big, strong warriors always talk about dying nobly to absolve your sins. Bullshit! It's harder, more noble, to live with the evil things you've done and try to make up for them. You're right, Vegita. You do owe me this _cho-gugol_. But I've told you how to be free of it."

He seemed to except that with a stoic Saiyan nod, a thing of honor that must be satisfied. "Thank you," I said softly.

"What have I done to warrant your thanks?" He asked, banked heat brimming behind his dark eyes. I could feel, sense in all my nerve endings, how much he wanted me at this moment…and that he would make no move to have me. I wondered if I wanted him to or not. I was still reeling, still in such shock at another massive change that had fallen on me with no warning.

"For telling Bardock and Scopa to take Rom-kun an myself to safety if anything happens to you."

"Eavesdropper," he growled, with a faint, poorly hidden echo of his old sweet smile. I don't remember the turn and twist of the rest of the night's conversation, I was so tired, almost falling asleep as I spoke. I remember he asked me how it came to be that I no longer hated Bardock, and I told him a long rambling story of my relationship with the man who had killed my world, the man who thought of me as daughter. "You're wondering if I still hate you," I said, and he nodded.

I told him the honest truth, the way I had seen the evil Prince as dead, the way everything I saw in him now, this synthesis of new and old, seemed to say that my enemy was still dead. But…I didn't lie and tell him it would be like it had been in that flowering field this afternoon. But maybe…maybe it could be something different. Something good.

He was silent, and he seemed to be choking for a second or two before he spoke the next words. "You are free," he whispered, his voice strained and raw. "I will give you a-a ship if you-" He was rapidly losing his ability to speak as he gave me the choice to stay or go. Not knowing I'd had the means to leave for a while now if a had chosen to do so. But the act of letting me go, as he saw it, of setting free what he so desperately wanted to keep because he loved me and wanted what would make me happy was…It was honest and unfeigned. He really thought that I would take the offer and leave tomorrow, maybe even tonight, and was willing to let me do so.

"I will stay," I said softly.

"You..." Now, he really was speechless.

"Will stay," I said again. "Partly because of Rom-kun, but also because of what's going on in the Capital and on Vegita-sei now. I won't run away with my own freedom and leave all the other slaves in the Empire to that monster Mousrom. If I can do anything to help stop him, I will. And don't think he'll stop with non-Saiyan's, Vegita. He's about two seconds away from petitioning your father to allow him to interrogate Saiyans as well."

"That will not happen," Vegita said firmly.

"Tell me that after you've been to Council tomorrow," I said grimly. "I can help you stop him, Vegita. The same way Scopa's going to help you. And...I can help with other things too. Give me tomorrow to get some things ready and I'll show you what I mean." I lay my head on his shoulder, staring into the dark, haunted eyes that held no childish rage and thoughtless cruelty, just mild wonder, as he listened to me speak. "And I'll stay because of you," I added, softer. "Because...I think you're as different from the man who went to war a year ago as if you'd died and been reborn. And because of that, I think you might become a king the likes of which Vegita-sei has never seen. A king who might hold an Empire together because it wants to be held together-not just out of brute force. I'll stay...for the hope of what you might become."

He kissed me and wound his arms around me, gentle and strong as they had been in Bardock's house. Just before he fell asleep, he murmured the word that would be our mantra in all the things that would come after tonight.

"Hope…" he breathed softly.

_The ship rolled sharply to the side and inverted and a great shuddering roar filled his ears._

_"Ouji-sama!" Coran's voice crackled through the comm. "You…come…hit by…"_

_Vegita leapt up unsteadily, tearing the data chip out of the mini comp. He tore around the room, peeling out the security crash safe, and shoving the disc inside. It would hold it in safe keeping, even if they were destroying in the depths of space. And one day, perhaps, someone would happen upon it and hear her story. And she and her people would not be forgotten as she had feared. He left the cabin and ran to the bridge to find the blue green world of Chikyuu looming before them, blocking all of the forward view screen. It was growing ever larger by the second._

_The ship was sinking into the atmosphere, spinning wildly out of control._

_"Ouji-sama!" Coran barked out. "They are here! But they do not recognize us, they are firing from the surface!"_

_"They will think it is some trick of Jeiyce's armies that we come in a Saiyan ship," Vegita muttered. "They believe all of our kind are dead except-"_

_The world exploded in red sparks and gray metal shards as the ship broke up around them. He was falling through open blue in a rush of clean, sweet-smelling wind. An instant before he lost consciousness, he felt Rikkuum's great fist lock around his arm._

_There was shouting all around, men and women's voice raised in anger, and Rikkuum's great, thundering voice crying out once, followed by a loud crash._

_A boot dug into his side, sending lancing pain through the horrible pressure that seemed to be compressing his chest._

_"Wake up, you monkey-tailed bastard!" A man said harshly. "Wake up so I can look you in the eye when I kill you!"_

_"Don't! Kill them now!" Someone else was almost moaning. "Oh Kami, kill them before they wake up and finish the job they started!"_

_"Kill them! Kill them!" The voices were rising, like pack animals in full_

_cry. Another kick, this rammed into his collar bone with an audible crack._

_"Son, if you kick him like that again I'm going to stun you instead of him," said a mild voice, an older man. "Can one of you youngsters clear everyone out of here that doesn't need to be here? I can't here myself think with all this hollering and commotion."_

_Vegita swam in and out of waking as the room or prison or wherever it was they were being held grew quiet. He slowly raised his head from the floor, and bared his teeth at his captors, spitting blood as he focused on the man, a man of his own years with a long, dark mane of hair and the build of a warrior. The one who had just broken his bones as he lay half conscious and unable to rise or fight._

_"Cowardly weakling," he hissed softly. The dark man leapt at him and landed another blow, sending his head spinning. Then another young man, smaller and bald, moved to stay him._

_"Stop it, Yamcha!" The smaller warrior barked. "You don't kick a man when he's down, and if you beat him to death, we won't learn how many more of them might be on the way. So, cool it!"_

_Coran had somehow managed to heave himself up to one knee, his weaving, unsteady body between the man Yamcha and Vegita, and snarl at their captives-some worthless second string column of Jeiyce's legions, no doubt. "Your squad brother is right," he said coldly. "You have no honor to beat another warrior who may not stand and fight you. You will not touch my Prince!"_

_"I have no honor?" Yamcha said softly. "How much of a chance did your friends give Chikyuu when they killed almost every living thing on this world nine years ago?!"_

_"When…" Coran jerked with surprise, and glanced around the large room at all the faces, his own going still. Vegita's mind was reeling as he tried to draw enough breath to breathe, to speak. But he could only roll onto his back and stare, coughing weakly as each breath grew more difficult in this position. There was something terribly wrong somewhere inside his body, but for the moment it was of less importance than the fact that both he and Coran had just realized._

_"You are not Jeiyce's men," Coran whispered. "You-you are Chikyuu-jin! How is it that there are any of you left alive?"_

_"We had a big bunker," the third Chikyuu-jin, the old man with the soft voice, spoke. He was regarding both Vegita and Coran without hate or even animosity, his blue eyes bright with curiosity. For some reason, he put Vegita in mind of an old Scopa. "Or _I _had a bunker. We knew they were coming this way, fanning out to do as much damage as they could, so I crammed as many people from our city as I could fit into the underground complex of my research facility." He sighed sadly, and shook his head. "We only saved about…ten thousand. And that was hard going, especially until the skies cleared. I had a kind of special shield around the place that kept them from finding us with those nifty little ki–scouting gadgets of theirs. We hunkered down for about two years, ate the emergency stores I had encapsulated down there, then went topside and re-seeded the planet with every plant we had samples of. Everything grew back really nice for having been burned so badly. But I guess you can understand why we'd be less than happy about seeing your people about to land on Chikyuu a second time." He frowned at Coran, then at Vegita. "Why did you come back, young man? Are there going to be more of you?"_

_"…are no more…" Vegita croaked._

_"There was a war," Coran said grimly. "Our world and our people are destroyed. There remain only a few thousand of our kind living, now. We came here seeking them."_

_The old man studied Vegita a second longer, then knelt down, with a hand raised to keep Coran from springing. He lay one practiced hand and Vegita's shoulder, then undid the straps of what remained of his armor, pulling it off lightly with Coran's help. The old man stared down at Vegita, his mouth turned down thoughtfully, his hand moving with practiced ease. "…doctor?" Vegita managed to force the word out._

_"Among other things," the old man said easily. He glanced up at Coran. "Your Prince has a hunk of metal imbedded in his chest. We need to take it out or he'll die."_

_Coran studied him hard, trying to assess what the old man's intentions might be. Then he nodded slowly._

_"Sir-" Yamcha began._

_"Yamcha," the old medic said, "there's been too much death and killing on Chikyuu already. These three boys and that big fellow you KO-ed didn't burn our world. Sounds like they know just how it feels to have that happen, now." He pulled some kind of primitive stat stabilizer out of one of the many pockets on his workman's apron and Vegita felt a flow of slow streaming stasis-trank particles, slowing his heart, washing away the pain and sense of terrible pressure on his chest. The old man's smiled at the weazing sigh of relief from Vegita as he gently pulled a small clean-lined metal rod from his left pectoral. It must have been pressing on his heart. "His breastbone's cracked and he needs a lot more extensive treatment, but he'll be fine. What are you called, young man?"_

_"I am Coran," Articha's son said slowly. "The other of my blood who is still unconscious is my brother Okuda, the big fellow is Rikkuum. And the man you have just saved is our Prince-our King, now." Coran's perfectly blank face was at odds with the almost imperceptible break in his voice._

_"Why did you come here looking for your people?" The smaller bald_

_Chikyuu-jin warrior asked, frowning curiously. "Why would they come to Chikyuu?"_

_"My Prince's Lady, his royal concubine, was born of this world," Coran said, glancing down at Vegita. "She was taken to Vegita-sei as captive nine years ago. Our world, all our people, were felled by an engineered virus. She was chief engine wright and chief physician of the our Capital's medical center, and saved tens of thousands of our children in quarantine there when the plague struck us down. She launched the Med Center into space and escaped with the babes and the few warriors and medics inside. We were left behind, as it was thought that no one could survive the contagion. Now, we search for the last of our kind. My Prince had thought his Lady might return home."_

_"A girl from Chikyuu?" Yamcha said, his brow furrowing. "How many captives did the warriors who attacked Chikyuu take?"_

_"Just the one," Coran said. "I have never met Bulma-san myself, but-"_

_The old man had dropped the med scanner and leaned to one side, paling. The two younger warriors were instantly on either side of him, supporting him._

_"Bulma…" The old man murmured._

_"Blue hair?" The bald man said. "She would be about twenty-six by now, smart as a whip and knock out gorgeous? Bulma Briefs?! Holy Shit!"_

_"It is her," Coran said, looking mildly stunned. "You knew her?"_

_"She's alive…" The old man was still trying to recover himself._

_"And she was…" Yamcha's frown deepened harshly. "You said she was his…'concubine'? What the hell do you mean by that?!"_

_"She came to Vegita-sei as a slave and, in the end, saved our race from utter destruction," Coran said, his posture tensing again, watching the way the dark-haired Chikyuu-jin's hands clenched angrily. "She rose to become physician, and weapons builder and concubine to the Crown Prince of our Empire. She would have risen higher still, my mother has told me, had the Prince been free to take an alien to wife."_

_"Wife…" Vegita whispered, closing his eyes and seeing the blue of her crystalline gaze staring back at him, endless seas of sadness in that azure blaze._

_"…not concubine…my wife…" And to his eternal shame, he sobbed softly in the view of these strangers, his teeth clamped together as tears began leaking down either side of his face. Oh God of gods, what he had done to her! All the sins he could never account for-_

_Her people…_

_And as the old man spoke his next words, Vegita's breath caught in his throat as the force of renewed hope came crashing down on him, and with it, a spark of hope. "True courage," she had told him once angrily, "is to face your sins and make amends." Any fool could die for shame and honor. It took a stronger man to live and make it right._

_Here, on what should have been a dead world, he had stumbled upon the one thing in the universe that might help heal the wounds in her heart and mind. The one thing that might bring her out of the well of madness she had been lost in when she left him to die in her rose garden. Her people…and her kin. He would not_

_die-not until he saw her reunited with these people._

_"Bulma is your wife?" The old eyes, blue as his woman's and as alight with inner fire and intelligence, were sparking with tears as well. "Then I'm pleased to meet you, young man," he said softly. "I'm Trunks Briefs. Bulma's father."_

(Coming Soon: Chapter V- Vegita and the last survivors of Chikyuu search for Bulma's hiding place, while Jeiyce's forces are on the hunt as well. The reunion, for good or ill, of Bulma and Vegita, and the rest of Bulma's diary up to the fall of Vegita-sei…and beyond.)


	5. Chapter 5

_**Vegita: Chikyuu**_

The voices came and went, sometimes hushed, sometimes raised in anger. He had a sense of time passing, of days and weeks going by like water passing him at a river's edge. He knew he had been injured badly, perhaps mortally. Had the Chikyuu-jin denied him treatment as payment in kind for all their slain millions? He sank in and out of consciousness, drifting some days in a sea of blessed forgetfulness, and sometimes in a hell of delirious nightmares…

"…should have recovered by now," Coran's quiet, deep voice came to him distantly.

"We've given him the best treatment we have," Briefs replied, sounding grim and frustrated. "Unfortunately, what we have isn't much. And…I think the staff and secondary infections he contracted after the surgery I performed are a direct result of the virus the three of you survived. It may have permanently damaged your immune system as well as the centers of your brain that channel your ki. Though…even that wouldn't account for the way his body has just refused to bounce back. Or the fact that he's not really regained consciousness once in all this time." A sigh. "But I think he's finally out of the woods. I'd hate to find my Bulma-chan only to have to tell her that her husband had died in my care."

"Have you made your decision then, Briefs-san?" Coran asked carefully, as though this was a subject he had discussed with the old man many times.

"They won't be here for another few weeks," the old man replied evasively. "It's not as cut and dried a decision as you might think, son. There are a lot of people who simply won't leave. We've worked so damn hard to bring this world back from the edge of oblivion-"

"And you have only the word of three men who are of the same race which burned this world," Coran finished curtly. "I understand. But I say to you again, on my honor as a warrior of Vegita-sei, that these communications from the "New Alliance of Worlds" are not what they seem. They fought my people for their freedom, but the belief that races who have no fighting power to speak of should be slaves of those who do is nearly a galaxy wide conceit. They will see this world-its vast seas and rich, ore-laden mountains, it's potential to house game and grow enough grain to feed a dozen worlds-and they will find a reason to take it from you. In truth, they have an excuse already. They know this is Bulma-san's homeworld. They search for the escape ship, for your daughter and the children who are in her care. They mean to kill them all."

"I'd say they came to the same conclusion your Prince did," Briefs said. "That she would take them home. Or at least it was enough of a possibility to check it out. And…you believe they'll use the fact that Bulma-chan was their enemy as an excuse to either purge Chikyuu all over again or take this world and enslave us all." A little silence. "I'm not the King of my people, Coran. I believe you, but we've discussed this time and time again among ourselves, and nearly everyone else wants to wait for this delegation to arrive and see what they have to say. They've suffered so much loss at Saiyan hands, a lot of them wouldn't believe you if you said the sky is blue. They think if these New Alliance people were the Saiyans' enemies they must be our friends." Vegita shifted anxiously, fighting his way upward toward consciousness. This would not happen! He would not see his woman's one chance to regain her self killed by Jeiyce's minions-very probably out of nothing more than malice that these trusting fools were Bulma's kin.

"Did he speak?" Rikkuum's deep voice, a rumble of childlike hope. "Ouji-sama! Wake up!" Something jostled him none too gently.

"Settle down, Rikkuum," the old man said with a note of command in the soft words. "Don't shake him like that, it's not good for him."

The world slipped away again. After what seemed like a moment or two, though it was certainly longer, he heard Rikkuum's voice speak again. "She told me I was free, that I could do as I please now," the big man said, as close to pensive as Vegita ever remembered hearing him. "But I have always been owned by someone. There are many men who would die a dozen terrible deaths rather than call another master. I am not one of them. I told her I did not wish to be free. Bulma-sama said she had been a slave and could never own another person, even if that person wanted to be owned."

"A slave…" The smaller, bald Chikyuu-jin warrior Krillan. "Man, that must have been hard on her."

"Taking orders from other people," Briefs murmured. "Building and designing someone else's work maybe. She could barely stand to work on a project with me, let alone be told what to do."

"What do you know about her time on Vegita-sei, Rikkuum?" Yamcha's voice, tense and full of quiet anger. "She was kidnapped by the men who burned Chikyuu, we know that."

"Yamcha-" Krillan began. The smaller man seemed to sense the anger and the true meaning of his squad brother's question.

"What happened to her after they took her to Vegita-sei?" Yamcha asked harshly.

"Captain Bardock-san brought her to Vegita-sei rather than see her slain with all the others on this world," Rikkuum replied. "He-Toma-san told me once while we drank together that she touched his heart when he saw her weeping over his son, Kakarott. He let her live because she had been as a sister to his son. And because she was beautiful."

The old man made a soft, wordless noise of grief in the sudden silence that followed his words.

No one spoke for a moment, then Krillan said a word, softly, angrily. "You insensitive bastard." He was not speaking to Rikkuum.

"Tell me it's not something we've all wondered since we found out they didn't kill her, Krillan!" Yamcha rapped out.

"Has it occurred to you that it _wasn't_ something Briefs-san had wondered?" Krillan said angrily.

"I-" Yamcha finally found the wisdom to shut his fool mouth.

"He did not harm her," Rikkuum said slowly. "Bardock-san could have sold her to a great courtesan house for a fortune, but he was not so cruel. He gave her to his son."

"As a…a technical slave?" Briefs asked, seeming to swallow hard as he spoke.

"No," Rikkuum went on uncertainly. "She was his…she was Raditz-san's pleasure slave."

Again silence. "Bulma-chan…" The old man said after a moment. He seemed to gather himself. "I'm all right, boys. Rikkuum…When did the Prince meet her?"

"I was not yet in my Prince's service," the giant warrior replied. "But…I have heard he was a guest in the house of Raditz when he first met her. It is said that he laid eyes on her and fell under her spell in the same instant. He took her from Raditz, who had been her master for more than five years. They fought, and Vegita-ouji slew Raditz with one blow."

"Good for him," Krillan said, a grim smile in his voice.

"It was a scandal that the Prince should have slain a man under his command for the sake of a bed slave. His father, the King, commanded that he set her aside more than once. Prince Vegita would not. He defied his father and custom and all the Elite on Vegita-sei to keep her and see her safe. He gave her a son, the youngest son of Bardock, to raise as her own. He set her free, and set her to build machines, shields to keep the enemy from attaching Vegita-sei. Many of the noble Elites feared her influence, believing that he would set an alien woman on the throne beside him as queen when he took the throne."

"Did she love him?" The old man asked, just above a whisper.

"I heard her say the words," Rikkuum replied in his slow way. "And I heard my Prince reply in kind, though it is against Saiyan custom to say such things aloud. When I saw them together, her eyes seemed to shine. I am not a quick man, but even I could see it between them."

Vegita wanted to scream aloud that the great idiot had it wrong, that the tale was twisted through the pretty lens of big man's hero worship. That he had been the villain, the monster, the ravaging beast. Not Raditz. But he could not speak a word to protest.

He tossed and moaned all that last day, tearing his way through to consciousness as the last warm shafts of the setting sun cut through the open window of the room, the scent of summer blooms drifting in, filling his eyes with helpless, weakling's tears as he recognized the scent.

"Roses…" He croaked. His voice was raw with disuse.

Briefs leaned over his bed, smiling sadly. "Yes. How do you know that, son?"

"She…she kept a garden. Of flowers cloned from dead petals sewn into the clothes she wore the day she came to Vegita-sei. The Chikyuu-jin roses were precious to her." Vegita turned his face away from the older man, in shame that he had wept again like a babe Romayn's age, in shame over so many things…

The old man nodded, his eyes distant with old losses, old pain, that would never fade with the passage of time. "Her mother kept a gorgeous garden, full of every flower you can imagine."

"There are things I must tell you…Briefs-san," Vegita began.

"I know some of what you are going to say, young man," Briefs said. "Save your strength for later. You're going to need it, I think. We all are.

You've been unconscious a long time, and there's a great dealing happening."

"You cannot trust the New Alliance," Vegita said, trying and failing to sit in his bed. "You must leave, with as many of your people as you may bring, before they reach this world! Force them if they will not go! They will be angry, but they will be alive. You do not understand-"

"It's too late," Briefs said, pushing him back down. "They're already here."

"Fool!" Vegita spat furiously, but the words sounded despairing as they reached his ears. "They will butcher you all! They will-"

"They may try," Briefs said. "But we're not entirely helpless. We shot your ship out of the sky and we can do the same to them if they force us to. I'd prefer that no one get hurt, but as a poet of my younger days once said, 'You can't always get what you want.'" He shook his head, frowning in his mild way. It made him look very like his daughter. "We couldn't just pack up and leave. We didn't have anything to leave in."

Vegita swore softly. Of course, they could not leave. They were at bare bones subsistancy after the purge ten years ago, and, in any case, had not been a space-faring race to begin with. A thought occurred to him. "My ship-it is in pieces, but there might be enough left of it to patch back together."

"That's been the plan," Briefs agreed. "And the gods smiled on us in a big way when they brought the three of you to us-your friend Okuda is a engineer. He specializes in ship design. The big problem wasn't knowing what to do, it was getting the raw materials. To make the 'ardantium' alloy he said we needed for the frame and bones of a new ship, we had to find the metals, then mine them, transport them and smelt them-all without the infrastructure of an industrialized society. To build the engines, we had to find eight diamonds the size of a T-rex's head, then we had to cut them to specifications within a hundred-thousandth of a centimeter-you get the point. Added to that, most of my people haven't lifted a hand to help us. Our nightly 'town meetings' have turned into shouting matches. There are a lot of folks who think we should welcome the New Alliance with open arms, and maybe even give you and your friends over to them as a sign of our good faith." The blue eyes narrowed in an expression he knew well-he had bequeathed to his daughter. It was a look of utter implacability. "We're a democracy in most things, but I told them that's not going to happen. They think the New Alliance sounds like the best idea since the wheel. So, that's a long way of saying that we've had precious little help building our ark, and we still won't be finished for another few months." Vegita tensed reflexively when the older man laid a kindly hand on his shoulder, pushing him back down onto his bed. No one, no man at any rate, had ever touched him so casually, without a trace of fear. No one except his own father.

"Don't worry yourself about it, Vegita. I'll take care of things if these people get out of hand. I've got Coran, Okuda and Rikkuum cooling their heels in the next room, and I've got a master dining room full of New Alliance types downstairs eating up half our stores for this winter. So, you and I will talk later. Okuda will fix you all up if you want to come downstairs and help out if Prince Jeiyce's boys decide to become unpleasant."

He left Vegita's bedside and tapped lightly on the door of the adjacent suite. Coran burst into the room with Rikkuum and Okuda at his back.

"How long?" Vegita asked Coran curtly when Bulma's father had left them.

Coran looked uneasy. "I know it has been more than a few weeks," Vegita prodded. "I was aware at times, though I could not move or wake."

"Five months," Okuda answered without expression. "They do not know why, but their medicine is relatively primitive."

Five months unconscious. Vegita had an idea as to the why of it. He somehow knew without any evidence to have led him to this conclusion that his long coma had been somehow a product of the too-deep bond with Bulma. He had been well enough while he was hale and strong in body, but when he had been weakened by his injury during the crash, that tie must have…have pulled him down into the silent stillness of her madness.

_Bulma…Beloved…_

He wrenched his mind away from that grief, forcing it to the emergency at hand. "How many of them are there?"

"Perhaps six thousand," Coran said grimly. "They arrived in a large Maiyosh-jin troop carrier. They must have had a real hope of finding the children here to have sent so large a fighting force. Jeiyce's pet Aquir-jin, Dodoria, leads them."

Vegita's blood thinned to ice.

_Crawl for me, you little Saiyan shit!_ Great booming laughter and the white-hot agony of a razor-barbed whip falling again and again and again. _Beg me to stop, boy. Beg me, and maybe, just maybe, we'll let you sleep a bit…_And the unrecognizable sound of his own voice, pleading, wailing like the broken, mad child he had become-

He was growling low in his throat like froth-mad animal. "Dodoria." He heaved himself out of the bed and stood on unsteady legs. Another half year spent lying on his fucking back! Another long road back to strength, back to health. Okuda reached out a steadying hand as the room began to tilt sharply to one side. "I will kill him!" Vegita hissed. "I will-"

"My Prince!" Okuda gripped him hard around the shoulders, braving the actual act of physically restraining his sovereign that the other two had not dared. "Hear me! We may fight if it comes to it, but if we are lucky it will not come to a fight. The force Dodoria has brought is a full compliment of fighting men. These Chikyuu-jin have no more ki than a pack of Madrani.

We are outnumbered, and we are no match for even one of them as we are now!" Vegita froze, and even Rikkuum seemed to sense the red haze of blood rage building inside his Prince, for the big man drew back a few steps.

"Nissan-" Coran began. But Okuda was not finished.

The younger man's face was hard, cold, without so much as a flicker of emotion, as he spoke the next words. "We cannot win with strength, so we must be cold and clever. And your Lady would not thank you if her father were killed while he is under your protection, Ouji-sama."

He could sense the others holding their collective breath, while he closed his eyes, trying to steady his own breath, trying to force down the insane rage at having been spoken to thusly by his own servant long enough to think. To think. What had his woman told him once? Something about counting from one to ten. He tried that, still trembling with anger that Articha's son had dared to lay hands on him, had spoken to him as though he were an addled-mind child. _Your Lady would not thank you if her father were killed while he is under your protection, Ouji-sama._

He took one more deep breath. Nothing Okuda had just said was anything other than a hard truth. They were outnumbered. They had no fighting power. They had no ship. He must see the old man back to his woman safely. So…so, they must be clever. He opened his eyes and fixed Articha's youngest son with a black angry stare

"Take your hands off me, soldier," he said harshly.

He and the other man were still nose to nose as Okuda slowly released him. The younger man's face was mild, without anger or apology, as though they had just been discussing the weather. "My father once told me," Vegita

said coldly, "that your mother was the kind of woman who always would tell him the truth as she saw it. Even if speaking that truth meant her own life. He said, 'Such a vassal is to be valued, boy. So, try not to kill her when she tells you what you do not wish to hear.'"

One corner of Okuda's mouth quirked minutely. "My life is yours to take or to command, Ouji-sama. But you should wait to kill me until after we have dealt with Jeiyce's lackeys."

Vegita stepped back and stood straight. "I will think on it. Perhaps I will only beat you bloody."

"Do they still mean to fight, Coran-san?" Rikkuum asked a moment later, his heavy features twisted in confusion. His frown deepened when the three Saiyans burst into a bark of short, growling laughter.

"This is Briefs-san's bit of cleverness," Coran stepped forward. He held what looked to be a small holo-projector in his hand. "Dodoria and his warriors are all equipped with scouters, but we-we will not register on them." He seemed to swallow before going on. "That is an advantage, in a sense, as we will be all but invisible to them. These holo-projectors will project an image that will rearrange our features and mask our tails and hair. Jeiyce's men will think we are Chikyuu-jin senshi. We are still strong in close quarters, strong enough to put a fist through the heart of most of the men Dodoria has brought with him."

Vegita strapped the holograph around one wrist, and nodded grimly. "We will watch and look for a way to take them at unawares, but if they attack, I command you to guard the old man with your lives." He did not add that he would have cheerfully given the rest of his woman's suicidally gullible race to Dodoria's tender mercies.

No. They were not gullible, only ignorant. They had been purged by Saiyan hands. Why should they trust a Saiyan's word that Jeiyce's men would betray them to death or slavery?

The corridor outside of Vegita's bedchamber led them to a mezzanine that looked down on a great hall. It was improbably huge, almost as large as the King's Hall on Vegita-sei though had been, and at the moment, seemed to be accommodating the entirety of the surviving populace of this world, and the bulk of Dodoria's men. Which put the tally of heads below them at something approaching 16,000 warm bodies.

"He took this hall from one capsule," Okuda said softly. Vegita could hear the quiet awe in the other man's voice. "He told me he built it years ago for some great party, and nearly forgot about it until a week ago. He set in off in the center of their main dwelling complex and the rest of the building simply expanded to accommodate the change. I cannot follow the mathematics behind how it was done."

They walked slowly down the great staircase that curled upward into the upper levels of the household like a giant serpent. The landing found them dead center of the crowd of happily mingling Chikyuu-jin and their 'visitors'.

"…and your coming is like an answer to a prayer," a smiling yellow-haired woman was telling a Maiyosh-jin soldier as they brushed past. She drew one finger tentatively down her companion's exposed forearm. "So, tell me…are you that color all over?"

Coran snickered audibly beside him, then paused, his body tensing. Vegita followed his gaze and bit down on his own tongue in effort to keep from leaping across the throng like a howling madman.

Dodoria was less than twenty meters away, seated at a circle-shaped high table that stood upon a raised dais half again the height of a man, and thus removed from the general crowd. The Aquir-jin was feasting like a starving Saiyan, his bloated pinkish face pulled into an obscene parody of a smile.

And on his left hand, sat Bulma's father. Vegita could hear Briefs speaking animatedly, as he and the others drew near, pushing their way through the press of bodies a little too fast to seem like men casually crossing the hall. The old man gave the appearance of a man on the drunken side of tipsy as he ambled from one subject to the next in a charming, friendly, almost dotty-seeming fashion, that Dodoria had apparently taken at face value. But as Briefs caught Vegita's eye as the Saiyans approached and slowly climbed the little stair to the top of the dais, Vegita did not mistake the look of cold, sober warning.

"Oh, look here!" Briefs exclaimed happily. "Dodoria-san, you haven't met my son yet." The old man motioned vaguely for Vegita and the others to sit down in one of the empty chairs to his left. A few seats over, the Chikyuu-jin warriors, Krillan and Yamcha, had tensed visibly. Vegita did not sit. He could barely breath with the effort it took to keep any semblance of calm. "This is Trunks," Briefs beamed proudly. "He's got a bit of a temper, but he's a good boy all the same. Are you and your friends keeping out of trouble tonight, son?"

"As best we can, Ottousan," Vegita said with deadly softness, not taking his eyes from the Aquir-jin's face. Dodoria was regarding him with amused condescension. He could see his own false reflection in the small twin mirrors of the 'Vice Chancellor's' eyes. Blue eyes beneath a soft fall of lavender that was the same shade as Briefs own faded hair. "I wished to meet our guests."

"Well, let me make introductions all the way around," Briefs began. "You know Yamcha and Krillan, and all the others from here in West Capital. This is Satan-san from New World City in the south -did I get your city's name right, Satan-san? I'm terrible at names. We've not had any real contact with them since we discovered that other people had survived in the old king's deep fallout shelters built during the cold war with the Red Ribbon Army. They just contacted us three or four months ago."

Satan was a barrel-chested, burly man, with heavy, frowning brows under a matted swath of tightly curling black hair. Apparently, life had been harder in the south since the purge. He and his small entourage looked like half-starved pack carnivores. Without the benefit of Briefs' sheltering bunker, his encapsulated stores of food and clothing, they had most likely spent the last decade surviving on rodents, insects, and the carcasses of their own dead. And the animal skins they wore, the lean look of their hard, dirty faces, said that they had yet to accept the charity of their neighbors.

"I have no interest in pleasantries, Briefs," Satan's deep voice was not quiet rude, but it held no note of friendliness. "I am here to see that you don't speak for all of Chikyuu and turn down what may be our only hope of survival."

"He was a lot friendlier two months ago when came begging for penicillin to treat his daughter's fever, wasn't he, Jissan?" Yamcha said darkly.

Satan rounded on him, but Briefs held up a quelling hand. "Gentlemen. We're getting off topic here. And Yamcha-kun-if you can't be polite to our guests, I'm going to have to send you away from the table like I did when you were a boy."

Yamcha said something under his breath in Chikyuu-jin that sounded like 'gomen', and crossed his arms.

"Now, what was I saying?" Briefs frowned. "Oh yes, introductions. Trunks-kun, this is Dodoria-san, Vice-Chancellor of the New Alliance of Worlds. He's just been telling us that Chikyuu falls directly inside the galactic quadrant of his new governorship. How does this new government work, Dodoria-san? Were we supposed to vote on our terms of membership, or is it just automatic?"

Dodoria gave him an oily grin. "Annexation is automatic for all worlds who have yet to develop space travel. The new senate has decreed that all worlds and peoples who have neither the technology nor fighting power to defend themselves against aggressors be taken under the protective wing of the regional governors for their own safety...if they prove themselves loyal to the Alliance."

"You've talked all night between helpings of our food about how it would be in our best interest to agree to the annexation of Chikyuu," a Chikyuu-jin woman of middle years with skin the color of polished blackwood said. "But the gist of what you've saying, Dodoria-san, is that we are yours to do with as you see fit. What do we gain if we agree to be your obedient satellite world?"

"More importantly, what will you do if we refuse? Krillan asked quietly.

Dodoria put down the plate he had been eating out of as though it were a trough, and motioned to motioned to the small group of Maiyosh-jin warriors who stood on the edge of the dais. They drifted over with a sense of casual danger implicit in their every move, taking up standing positions all around the table. A scar-faced warrior with the fiery claw insignia of the Red Demons burned into the breast of his armor took a place at Dodoria's right shoulder, half a meter from where Briefs sat. Far too close. Vegita had a sudden mental image, as clear as a waking dream, of the Maiyosh-jin reaching out and casually breaking the old man's neck, of Dodoria's rumbling, malicious laughter. "Something very like that," the dream Dodoria chuckled.

Vegita stepped forward and took up a place behind Briefs, giving the Maiyosh-jin a warning stare that had turned lesser men's bowels to water in the past. The Maiyosh-jin only sneered, unafraid. Why should he fear, Vegita thought bitterly. The red bastard could sense no fighting power in him. None at all.

But Dodoria made no move to command the warrior at his shoulder. His squinting, piggish gaze was fixed on Vegita. "Your son seems to mistrust us, Briefs-san," he snickered. "Well, now…first, let me say that I've not had a meal like this in many a year. I've a mind to offer your chef employment on my private staff before I leave. On the matter of what-ifs-well, I prefer to keep unpleasant possibilities in the realm of maybe unless someone forces my hand. I wish Chikyuu well. I truly do. But this world is in a very touchy situation, politically speaking. Tell me, Briefs-san," Dodoria leaned forward, leering pleasantly at the older man beside him. "What became of the three Saiyans you shot out of the sky five months ago?"

"Well," Briefs said without missing a beat, "one of the young men died of his injuries shortly after they crashed. The other three…" He looked pained.

"There was a mob," Yamcha said bluntly. "We recognized them by their tails as the same race that purged our world, and our people went nuts. They drug them out of their holding cell and burned them alive. That's how most of our families died, you know, during the purge. They were burned alive. I'd say that was pretty just in the long run. They died the way they killed."

"We have heard that two survived," the Red Demon at Dodoria's shoulder said.

"I don't know who would have said something like that," Briefs looked innocently perplexed.

"I did!" Satan snapped. "I heard it from your own people. They said you've been real sneaky about it, kept the bastards out of sight for the most part, but that you kept at least one of them alive for sure. They described the one they saw to a tee! Said he had black, spiked hair and a tail, and that he could fly like a goddamn bird." Satan nodded to Dodoria. "Your man Tresha here told me you wanted a sign of loyalty, that we'd have a cache of your medicines and foods the moment you took us on as a protectorate." He jerked his head at Briefs. "To hell with this old fool! I speak for my people and we are ready to live like civilized men again. We'll give you whatever fealty you want, Dodoria-sama. A little freedom is a small price to pay to keep our children from starving this winter."

"The 'Saiyan' your spy saw was me, you stupid son of a bitch," Yamcha said, his voice dripping with disgust. "_I _have black spiky hair and I'm as Chikyuu-jin as you are! The 'tail' your friend saw was the end of my gi sash!" He stood, pushing his chair back with a clatter and rose two meters into the air, hovering, before he levitated back down into his seat. "Most Chikyuu-jin can't fly, can't harness their own ki to so much as light a match. But I can."

"So you can," Dodoria remarked.

Behind him, Tresha tapped the advanced setting on his scouter. "He's got a very high reading, first string warrior status. But the pattern of his ki signature is consistent with the other natives. He's Chikyuu-jin." The Maiyosh-jin shrugged. "You see this a lot of times in species that are on the evolutionary brink of ki sensitivity. He's just precocious for his kind." Tresha eyed Satan and shook his head in disgust. "I think this Chikyuu-jin Satan is a fool who wouldn't know a Saiyan from his own anus."

The smaller Chikyuu-jin warrior, Krillan, made a noise that sounded like muffled laughter. Satan only sputtered indignantly, though he said nothing in his own defense. He had just enough intelligence to sense that these smiling invaders would think nothing of killing him. Less than nothing.

"He is a fool to offer any man his unconditional service," Vegita said. He had not taken his eyes from the Maiyosh-jin, Tresha. "Only a coward would sell himself and his kin into slavery for a the luxury of a full stomach."

Satan's chest puffed up belligerently. "I won't be lectured about a full stomach by some spoiled rich man's son! You have no idea-"

"Close your mouth, you ki-less animal," Tresha said coldly. Satan's mouth gaped. Then he did as he was told. If nothing else, the man had good survival instincts. But then, the threat in the Maiyosh-jin's flat, almost off-hand command was hard to mistake.

"Is that what we are to you?" The bald warrior, Krillan, asked quietly. "Animals? My fighting power is as high as Yamcha's. Am I still an animal, or is it just Satan-san and all the other members of my race who can't manipulate their own ki?" He sounded earnest, not angry. But there was an odd note of pity in his voice.

The Maiyosh-jin shrugged, and incredibly, seemed a little uncomfortable under the bald Chikyuu-jin's steady gaze. "It's just an expression."

"You just fought a war to free your people from the Saiyans," the smaller man went on. "I bet the Saiyans thought of your people as animals, didn't they? How can you turn right around and do the same to someone else?"

The Maiyosh-jin's expression flickered with a ghost of shame for a brief instant, then he set his jaw. "I meant that man in particular, not all your race. We are not enslaving you, however you chose to see it. If you are not in league with the enemy, we will offer you our protection and guidance."

"Can I ask another question?" Krillan said politely, glancing between Dodoria and the Red Demon. "You came here looking for Saiyan survivors of your manufactured plague. Have you found any up until now? And what did you do with them when you caught them?"

"We have found quite a few who survived the contagion," Tresha said with an unpleasant smile. "Several hundred, initially. The plague burned out the ki centers of their brains, so they aren't much of a threat to anyone. But you Chikyuu-jin, who have suffered a Saiyan purge like so many other peoples throughout the galaxy, will be happy to know that we did not kill them. We have gathered the bulk of the survivors in a great circus on a world called Shikaji. People come from all over the galaxy to…participate. To have a bit of sport with them. They have to be restrained at all times from taking their own lives, and most of the adults have simply pined and died after a few months of this sort of attention. So, we are always looking for more."

"What do you do to them?" Okuda's voice was so soft it was barely audible."

"Everything we can think of," Dodoria chuckled, shoving another ladelful of food into his pink maw. "We have served them all as they served us for many a decade. The males and the little ones stay in the main arena, and we've built a brothel for the surviving females. Tresha and his men discovered a while back, when we had one of their high ranking female soldiers as our guest for a short while, that their women make fine whores."

A soft sound of breath forced out through clenched teeth behind him. Okuda had driven an elbow hard into his elder brother's gut to keep him from flying across the table in a shrieking blood rage. Yamcha had bent down beside Coran, was speaking softly and intently to him.

"Well, friends?" Briefs said quietly, turning a suddenly stone cold sober gaze on each member of the assembled Chikyuu-jin elders seated around the table. "Has everybody heard enough?"

"So," Dodoria murmured. He drew a cloth across his mouth, wiping it clean, and pushed back his plate. "There'll be no live Saiyan prizes to take home to Jeiyce and his lads. It was probably foolishness on our part to think that a people purged by the monkeys would have harbored them for any reason. Ah, well. We'll move on to the next order of business. Briefs, my good man, tell me…Have you heard from your lovely daughter recently?"

The old man's face showed only a vague mix of surprise and confusion. He could have set a son of the old Trade Houses to school in the way he schooled his expressions to mislead, Vegita thought as he stepped forward, now nearly breast to breast with the Maiyosh-jin. He turned his cold glare from Tresha to the Aquir-jin.

"Briefs-san's daughter and wife died in the purge." Yamcha nearly spat across the table at Dodoria. "Is this some strange alien idea of a joke!?"

"They tell me her name was 'Bulma'," Dodoria leered. "An unusual name. And the surname 'Briefs', is it also uncommon on this world?" His smiled widened, baring the needle-sharp teeth that gave him the look of a grinning sea shrike. "Play time is over, children. I think some of you know very well that Bulma of Briefs House, Bulma of Chikyuu, Bulma the Mastertech and whore to the Saiyan no Ouji, and Bulma traitor to the Red Network is alive and well and on the run from the New Alliance. I think you, old man, may even know where she is. Now, I have several choices to offer you fine people. If one of you knows the location of Briefs' errant daughter, and tells me, _and _this information proves to be true-I will consider it an act of good faith and take this world under the benevolent wing of my governorship. Trust me in this-I _will_ find out what you know and how much. Now, it may be that no one here knows a damned thing about what your world's most infamous daughter has been up to these last ten years. If, when I have questioned all of you and a suitable number of your folk, I am convinced that this world has had no contact with the 'Saiyan no Ojo', and knows nothing-well then, I will still extend the hand of charity to your foundering people. On the condition that Master Briefs here accompanies us back to Shikaji." He smiled into the stricken faces of the Chikyuu-jin around the table, his piggy gaze halting on Briefs. "I am betting your pretty daughter, wherever she may be hiding, is monitoring hyperlight transmissions constantly for information on what is going on in the rest of the galaxy. If we advertise that you are our guest, I think she may just come to Shikaji to save her dear father from execution."

"You're probably right," Briefs said, not a trace of good humor left in his face. He turned his gaze on the other Chikyuu-jin seated around the table. "Are we agreed, then?" One by one, they all nodded silently. "Satan-san?"

The burly man bowed his head, inclining the upper half of his body forward in a formal bow. "I have been a fool, Briefs-sama," the man said with a chagrined humility that Vegita would never have believed possible from such a worthless blowhard.

"A fool couldn't have kept his people alive for the last ten years, Satan-san," Briefs said kindly. A small alarm, the shrill beep of a pager, sounded. Briefs raised his forearm, checking the message readout on the tiny comm link around his wrist. "My goodness. That kind of perfect timing almost never happens in real life." He turned back to Dodoria and smiled. "I think we're all agreed to reject your offer, Dodoria-san."

A cool blue light lanced through the width and breadth of the great hall, and the sound of hundreds of clattering thuds ricocheted off the walls as every armored soldier in sight collapsed unceremoniously. Dodoria's head had fallen forward into the pudding a whirring servo-bot had placed in front of him a moment before. Tresha was lying on his back, out cold. Gods…they were all out cold! Every man Dodoria had brought with him.

Every man except Tresha.

The Maiyosh-jin met his eyes, shock already bleeding away into anger, and sprang to his feet. He began to raise his hand in reaction, a needlepoint blast aimed at Briefs' heart. Vegita closed the distance between them in half a second, both arms gripping the man in a bear hug, clamping the Maiyosh-jin's arms down to his sides. In the next half-instant, he staggered them sideways, off the edge of the dais and onto the floor. Away from Briefs. A burning knife of pain shot through his stomach, but he did not let go. Another second later a cry of rage from Rikkuum and Articha's sons, and Tresha was hauled up by his neck and shaken like a rodent in a predator's mouth. Rikkuum dealt the Maiyosh-jin a ringing blast that made Vegita's ears ring, collapsing the Red Demon's ki shield. And the same instant, Coran slashed Tresha's throat with the edge of one of the table knives.

"Dammit, boys!" Briefs was saying angrily, somewhere close by. "I said no killing!"

"It is _cho-gugol_, Briefs-san," Coran said thickly. "It is _cho-gugol_!"

"Ouji-sama!" Rikkuum was leaning over him now, blocking out the sight of everything except his own great frame. The pain in his stomach was white hot and deep.

"Move back and let me look at him, Rikkuum," Briefs gently pushed the giant man back and peered down at Vegita's would. "Well…he didn't get a good shot at you or there'd be nothing left. But you're going back on the operating table. That was very brave and very foolish, son."

"I am not so weak, even now," Vegita rasped. "That I cannot protect my own kinsman."

"Weak is not a word I'd ever associate with you, Vegita," the old man said grinning. The sound of a trank hypo and Vegita felt his body relaxing, falling downward into sleep, the sounds of screaming mixed with cheers and running feet all around him.

He woke to the sound of great engines revving in the still of early dawn.

"If you keep this up, I'm worried I may not get you back to my daughter in one piece, son."

He was in a ship's med bay on a standard full sized troop carrier. The triage port was wide open, letting in the sound and damp heat of the night outside. Chikyuu-jin were running in and out, loading supplies in a rush of hurried activity.

"Those holo-bands I gave you and your friends shielded you against my knockout ray," Briefs said. "It was keyed to any brainwaves it didn't recognize as human. I think you must have been standing so close to Tresha when the blast hit that your wristband shielded him as well. We had to wait until several of our young ladies managed to get Dodoria's soldiers to invite them on board the ship during the party. I was waiting for their call, letting me know they'd blasted the soldiers manning the ship with the knockout ray. And long enough for Dodoria to show his true colors in front of everyone. All the pro-New Alliance sentiment among our people sort of vanished after that last little speech of his."

"You are…" Vegita coughed, wincing at the tightness of newly healed skin across his abdomen. "You are a devious old man."

"That's not really a nice thing to say," Briefs grinned slyly, the corners of his eyes crinkling in suppressed mirth. "My father always told me that it's better to show people they're being foolish rather than shout it at them. I wish your friends hadn't killed Tresha, but they explained why. Their poor mother."

"Never call her that to her face if you wish to live," Vegita croaked. "You are refitting this troop carrier as your transport?"

"It's taken a couple of days, but we'll be ready to leave this evening," Briefs said. "We've got Dodoria and his friends sedated so heavily they may not wake up for a week." He eyed Vegita's bared teeth and frowned at the low growl issuing from his son-in-law. "He gave you those scars, didn't he? I don't know how I knew that, I just did."

Vegita glanced down at his bared chest, at the network of lash stripes the Aquir-jin had gouged into his body. He was shaking with fury. "You will not take my revenge from me," he said.

"I'm not being as kind to them as you think. We're leaving him and his people here," Briefs said flatly. "Marooned, without supplies or a getaway ship. And I'm encapsulating Capsule Corp's main structural complex and taking it with us, so they won't even have proper shelter when they wake."

They would starve before a rescue ship arrived. Vegita sank back down

onto his bed, willing the tension and rage to subside. Let it be then. Let Dodoria die a death as honorless as the life he had lived.

Briefs shook his head. "Bulma-chan must have had her hands full with you and that temper." He stared at Vegita in silence for a moment, then seemed to force himself to ask his question. "Is she all right? Was she all right the last time you saw her?"

"No," Vegita whispered. He didn't turn from that steady, clear blue gaze.

"How did you know?"

"You talked a lot while you were unconscious this time. You were telling her you were sorry over and over. Begging for her forgiveness." A little silence. "What did you do, son?"

He owed this man blood debt that he could only pay with his own life. If he told the truth, the entire truth, Briefs would more than likely kill him or abandon him here on Chikyuu with Dodoria. Either way, the man would never take help from Vegita's hands, and that would not do. Vegita must see his woman's father and people safely to wherever it was the last of the Saiyans had made their new home. He would tell the whole truth in time, and accept whatever punishment her kin deemed just. But for the moment…

"I will give you the shorter of two answers," Vegita said softly. "She had lost her family, her world, everything she ever knew. I did not truly understand what a hard thing that was for her to bear until these last few months. I think the wound never healed. But she grew strong again, mostly because of the child she bore to Raditz. Because she had something to care for again." He took a deep breath. "The night I took her from Radtiz, while I fought him, my squad lieutenant…he killed the babe in the struggle. Before her eyes. I punished him, but the deed was done, and she nearly lost her mind."

"She blamed herself…" Briefs said softly. "Probably thought if she'd just stayed put, minded that bastard she was slave to and never fallen for you, that the baby would have lived." Vegita clenched his teeth in a grinding wave of shame. But he could not rid the man of his misconceptions. Not now. Perhaps not ever. It came to him suddenly that to tell the entire tale would be like driving a knife into the old man's heart. Gaining Briefs hatred, letting himself suffer the brunt of the punishment he so richly deserved would only serve to assuage his own sense of shame and regret. But the truth of how it had been, of what she had suffered, might kill this old man.

"She forgave me the blame of it," Vegita whispered. "And yet, she did not. It was always there between us. Raditz' mother was killed in the war and she willed her infant son to Bulma. And it seemed to ease her grief. Her entire world revolved around the boy, and I thought all was well. She was happy. We were…it was good. Better than I thought life could ever be. On the night we wed, I put her with child. It was the end of the war, the beginning of a season of madness, when we cloister all our children and those unable to fight against the coming of Vegita-sei's moon. I told her…I told her it could not be. That a half blood heir to the throne would divide the Empire. My people would have killed such a child and her with him. I was a fool. It broke her mind, Briefs-san. And when she found me in the aftermath of the plague, I saw that she was mad. That I had destroyed her trying to save her life. She left me to die, telling me she could not love me any longer and live. So…so, I will bring you to her. It will heal her mind and heart to see that you and the others live. I will see her whole, even if she hates me to her dying day."

Briefs did not speak, though tears were rolling down his cheeks. He slowly took a small papery cylinder from his pocket and lit one end, drawing the herb's smoke into his lungs at the other. "She doesn't hate you, Vegita. She was just very angry and hurt…and probably very sick. You screwed up, I won't lie to you. You should have found a way to rescue her from this Raditz that didn't put my grandson in the crossfire. You should have known what having an abortion would do to her after losing her first child that way. But I know you meant to keep her safe. I know you love her. Gods…It's…it's a big, messy tragedy, son. I can't tell you what she'll do when you see her again, but the child I raised had a good, strong heart. And a strong mind. I believe you when you say she had some kind of breakdown, but…she'll get better. Has she got people around her who love her?"

"Bardock would die for her," Vegita said. "He calls her 'daughter'."

"The same Bardock who led the purging squad that burned Chikyuu?" Briefs' expression turned a bit cold.

"The same. He took her as a kind of replacement for his son, the one she called 'Son-kun'. He had always cared for her as thought she were his own kin."

"I'd think better of him if he hadn't given her to his son as a…a…"

"I will be frank with you, if only to ease your mind," Vegita said. "Raditz never took her by force. She was very young and alone and he was a man women find pleasing to look on. He seduced her, he did not hurt her. She was his slave, unfree to leave, unfree to refuse him or order her own life…but he was not unkind to her."

The older man seemed to wilt with relief, shaking with the false belief that she had never been…been used like an animal. "This Bardock fellow will take care of her, and she's surrounded by doctors," Briefs said after a moment. "And she has the little boy she adopted, Bardock's son. She'll get better, Vegita. She's a very strong girl. We'll have to believe that. And in the mean time, you and I will do everything we can to find her. All right?" He sighed and took another long draft of his burning herb. "I've done everything to get the ship ready and Okuda's priming the engines. I'm going to go outside and walk for a while on my world. I'm going to miss it something awful."

"The boy lives," Vegita said hoarsely. "She did not abort him. He will have been born by now. And when she left me, I saw his name in her mind.

Trunks…for her father."

Briefs smiled, the blue of his old eyes overly bright, and left him without another word.

Vegita woke again, hours later, to find Rikkuum beside him, waiting patient and loyal as Baka or Yaro. "Are we away?"

"We are in space, Ouji-sama." Rikkuum lay something in his hand. Vegita felt his heart skip a beat when he saw what it was. The data disc of Bulma's journal.

"How-?"

"I found it as we looked for new spaceship parts in the wreckage of our ship, Ouji-sama." Rikkuum said. "I listened to the first minute and heard your Lady's voice. I knew it was yours and that you would wish to have it when you woke."

"You did well," Vegita said fervently and the giant beamed with happiness. "Go rest, Rikkuum. I need no guard now that I am awake."

He waited until the big man left to palm the disc into the bed's mini-comp.

Bulma: Vegita-sei

I woke when Vegita moved out of my arms at dawn. He kissed me once, soft on the lips, and left to go and surprise his father and the High Council.

"It will be all right," I whispered, sitting beside the bathing pool as he bathed, his face distant and worried. All his emotions are still evident in every flicked of expression on his face, just as they were yesterday and the day before. I suddenly realized that he knew this. His father and the

Council would see it too, and that was the problem. He was so changed, he was almost unrecognizable now, and they would distrust any difference they saw in him at this point, and fear it was a new shading of his madness. He's the sorriest liar I've ever known, and I think he knew he wouldn't be able to pretend he was the same as before. How would his father react to this-this fusion of the "gentle boy" and the violent son he had raised to manhood?

"I am strong," he said, meeting my eyes as he levitated out of bath, drying his body with his ki. He hadn't asked me to join him, and I hadn't offered. He understood without being told that bathing together was somewhere just past the invisible threshold I didn't want to cross right now. Not until I figured out just what the hell I felt for him now. Not until I had time to get a grip on everything that had happened yesterday. "They will not throw me down easily. Whatever happens today or tomorrow, I will see that you and the boy are safe." He finished pulling on his battlesuit and armor, and bent to kiss me. He pressed a data disc into the palm of my hand. "This is a royal requisition seal," he said softly. "Take any one of the space worthy ships docked in Med Center's hanger for yourself. If I am thrown down, today or in the future, take the boy and go." I stared into his black solemn eyes, wordless. "Take Scopa and as many others as you wish," he added shortly. We regarded each other silently for a moment, neither of us knowing what to say or how to be today, now that everything was so different. Then he kissed me once more, gently, in the Chikyuu-jin way before leaving to reclaim his seat at his father's right hand.

I sat and stared into the steaming water for a while, thinking that there were far too many conflicting emotions doing somersaults inside me to have any interest in breakfast. A low duet of canine growls and the sound of Rom-kun's voice begging the dogs to be good got me moving again. What I found in our new bedroom sent my stomach lurching up into my throat.

Batha was backed up against the wall, while Baka and Yaro snarled at her, low and threatening, their backs arched, their teeth bared. Rom-kun was sitting up on his pallet bed looking afraid and unhappy.

"Don't hurt her, doggies!" He said, biting his lip, on the verge of tears.

She didn't appear terribly afraid of the dogs, but she had let them back her up to the wall with a healthy respect for what they might do if they pounced. She cut her eyes to me venomously. "Call these filthy beasts off, Bulma!"

"They aren't trained to obey that way," I said coldly. "I want you and your sister out of this house today." The words hung there while I went to Rom-kun and lifted him up, checking him for any sort of mark or injury. Oh gods, that woman had come into the room where my baby was sleeping! This cold, heart-dead bitch who would kill a Saiyan child with as little hesitation or remorse as she would feel when stepping on a bug...

"So..." She sneered, looking me up and down like an elderly matron repulsed by a streetwalker. "You have become his 'doll' after all."

"We do not know that she has betrayed us, sister," Caddi said quietly from behind me. She was standing in the doorway, her ivory skin gray with pinched tension.

"I haven't betrayed anyone," I said evenly. "But I know you. Both of you. And I don't want you in the same room or even the same house as my baby."

"That Saiyan is not your baby, you poor, broken little fool!" Batha hissed.

"I won't argue with you about it," I snapped. "Think what you want."

I stood coldly and watched as they packed up their few belongings, Caddi directing pitying glances in my direction, Batha glaring black murder at me.

"I'll see you both are officially rotated to Med Center," I told them when they were done. "You'll be safe there from the inquisition until Zarbon can assign you new Network posts."

"I heard you last night, whore," Batha said venomously. "Lying in your master's arms, telling him you would help him save his people."

"Sister!" Caddi hissed. "We should go. Now! Bulma-chan has told the Prince sweet lies a thousand times before. Why should last night be any different? You saw him! He is like a shadow of himself. Great goddess, sister, if he is a weak wreck now, totally in her power...isn't that what we wanted all along? And..." Her shoulders were shaking, but her stooped posture was drawing up straight. I had never once heard her contradict her sister until this moment. "And she is right to fear for the boy, Batha. You...you should not dwell in the same house with him. He would not be safe alone with you..." She bowed her head, her glance falling away from her sister's stunned face. "Or with me. The Network sustains us. It is all we need or hope for. This child is what sustains her. Bulma-chan has done great things for the cause, sister. I think she will do greater things still...but this Saiyan baby is the thing she needs to keep living."

This seemed to mollify Batha as much as she was capable of being mollified. I watched them leave, holding Rom-kun in a tight embrace. I hadn't put him down once while they were packing. I stood thinking hard of what to do next, until Rom-kun's voice jarred me out of the dark thoughts rolling through my head.

"Mommaaaa!" He piped, when I still didn't move. "I'm hungry!" I was thinking, worrying about what they might do now. And about what they would say to Zarbon. I needed to talk to him soon, today. I wanted the twins away from Med Center as soon as possible, before Batha began to snoop, before she began to suspect what I was going to be doing for the next few weeks. At some point, I thought with a chill of unease as I fed Rom-kun his meat pie, very soon, there would be no hiding my new 'project' from them...or Zarbon. Zarbon, I truly believed I could talk around to my way of thinking, at least in part. But Batha...she would lose her mind when it became known, and Caddi would see it as proof that her sister had been right about me all along.

They would try to kill me.

And in making an attempt on my life, they might hurt Rom-kun. They would think nothing of killing him.

I stopped, motionless and horrified, as I was throwing my med satchel in the flyer. My gods, I had been beyond considering it. I had begun sifting through possible methods as I strapped baby and dogs into their seats, ways to kill the twins that could not be traced back to me. There had to be a way to keep them from coming after me. I wouldn't let there be no other way. Because if they did-God of gods, I will kill them without hesitating to keep my baby safe.

I trailed into Med Center, Rom-kun on my hip, so deep in thought I nearly ran into Scopa.

"There's a lot you need to hear," he said grimly. "Most of it's bad."

Mousrom has commandeered half the surgery's trauma specialists. He has them working for his inquisition center in Kharda City.

Nachti was taken. My friend is in the Inquisitor's half acre of Hell, being forced to use her skills as a physician to keep Mousrom's victims alive as long as possible, so they can last longer under torture. Hiru had a breakdown after they took her. He's better now that he and Scopa are receiving regular communications from her, but he can't seem to concentrate on anything for long periods of time and breaks down into tears over the smallest things. Scopa had him taken off flight transpo duty indefinitely and assigned as an orderly directly under Nail so he can have constant care.

How much emotional trauma can someone take and still get back up again? The med texts say it depends on the person. I spent the first half of the morning just sitting and talking with him, holding his hand, listening to him cry. He asks me what he had done to deserve this. I didn't have an answer for him. All I know is that we have to get her back soon, not just for her sake. If she's gone much longer, we'll lose Hiru.

"I would have thought that the uncontrolled tears were a bad sign," Scopa told me as he closed the door to his offices after leaving Hiru sleeping in his quarters. "But I'm not a psychologist. Nail says they are healthy."

I closed my eyes, listening to the sound of Rom-kun tearing around and over the gurneys in the next room and the dogs' deep happy 'woofs'. "It's when the tears stop that you have to worry," I said softly.

"I was sure I wouldn't need to come to the villa this morning and see to you," he said hesitantly. "Please tell me I was right."

"You were right," I said. "He didn't hurt me. I don't think he'll ever hurt me again."

Scopa sighed heavily with relief and seemed to search for the right words. "His body posture, his gestures, the way his emotions show on his face...that soft voice he speaks in-those are all 'our' Vegita, not the one from before. It's as though the Vegita before and the Vegita we knew at Bardock's house-"

"Have merged together," I finished, nodding. "Externally, he seems harder, more Saiyan, now. He remembers it all, Scopa. All of our time at Bardock's, all that the Maiyosh-jin did to him...all that he did to me." I made a soft wordless noise that did no justice to the confusion and conflict raging inside me.

"You loved him as he was in Bardock's house," Scopa said, studying me closely. "Goddess...you still love him, don't you?" He swallowed hard. "Bulma. That could be very bad for you."

"Yeah," I said with a mirthless little laugh. "That's occurred to me." I looked him in the eyes, the only person in all the galaxy I could tell the whole truth to, the only person I knew who wouldn't judge me or despise me. "I can't stop loving him. I think it will probably tear me apart before this is all over, but I don't know what to do about it. We lay awake all last night talking about what he wants to do now. About what I want now. He freed me, Scopa. We...we didn't have sex. We..." I shook myself and spoke again before he could think of anything to say. I couldn't think about that right now. I couldn't waste time crying today. There was too much to do.

A light tap on the door and Nail's smiling face appeared, nudging a barking dogs back through the half-open door with one foot. He surprised me with a hug. He had told me months ago that he avoided physical contact with unshielded non-telepaths because touch always gave him unwilling broadcasts of their thoughts. I was so intent on the Namek-jin that I didn't notice at first that he hadn't come alone. I could hear Rom-kun talking to someone behind him, telling the unseen person all about flying with his Poppa, how he wanted to make big booms like Poppa and Edeeta, and how he had a brand new house that was all his own, and Momma and Edeeta and the dogs lived there too. I peeked around Nail's broad frame to see Zarbon leaning down, listening with mild wonder to my son's cheerful chatter. I could see him counting the months since Rom-kun's birth, see his hidden unease that so young a child was carrying on a conversation that would have been precocious for someone four years his senior.

Rom-kun had worked his way around to the story of how his doggies had almost bitten two ladies this morning. "Momma was mad," Rom-kun's voice dropped confidentially. "She told 'em to go away, cause they didn't like me. When Poppa and Edeeta come home tonight, the bots will make lots of meat pies. That's my favorite. Do you like meat pie? Momma said Scopa has to take care of hurt people tonight and can't come, but you can come. After supper, Scopa and Edeeta play toss with me. You can play, too."

"What do you toss?" Zarbon asked solemnly.

"Me," Rom-kun chirped. "Sometimes Scopa drops me and Momma yells at him, but Edeeta threw me too high one time and she yelled at him too. He's a Piss." Zarbon grinned widely.

"He means Prince," I said blandly.

"I like Piss better," Zarbon said, trying to smother a wide smirk.

"Do you know Edeeta and Poppa?" Rom-kun asked brightly

"I know your father," Zarbon said, hesitating an instant before responding to the boy's up-stretched arms and picking him up. "I've never met the Prince in person."

"He was hurt, but he's better now," Rom-kun said.

"So I hear."

I moved forward a little too quickly and took Rom-kun from him. The mild hurt in his eyes made me sorry I had done it an instant later. Zarbon would never hurt my baby.

"We've been getting reacquainted," Zarbon told me, offering me a chaste kiss on the cheek. "I told Rom-kun the last time I saw him he couldn't talk. He speaks very, very well for a child his age."

"Yes, he does," I said quietly.

I knew Scopa and Nail could feel the tension between us in the little silence that followed, but they said nothing. "I'm glad that the three of you are here," I finally said. "There's a lot we need to discuss."

Zarbon folded his arms, his beautiful face giving away nothing. The gods knew what Batha had told him. "We're listening."

"We all know there are two forces working against each other in this war. Out in space, on Vegita-sei, and in Med Center itself," I said. "I have a proposition: that we become a third force, dedicated to saving everyone on both sides in spite of themselves. Well...everyone except Mousrom. I am sick of death everywhere, all around me, and of being powerless to stop the killing."

"Bulma-" Zarbon began.

"Here me out," I said. "Do that much for me. Then each of you can make your own decision." I waited until Zarbon nodded tensely. "I think I can stop this war. I have a technical solution and a fairly straightforward three-step plan. Step one is a no brainer: Get rid of Mousrom."

"I'll help you do that with all my heart, love," Zarbon murmured.

"We have quite a few allies in this portion of the plan," I said. "Bardock and his whole crew are in on it, but you probably know he's been working at cross purposes to Mousrom for quite sometime."

"I know," Zarbon gave me a veiled half grin. "I've actually helped him out on one or two anti-Mousrom ventures."

"My sole concern is yourself and Rom-kun, Bulma-san," Nail said. "But I have seen things done to the people who have survived Kharda that I cannot turn away from. I will help."

"If you give me your permission," I said. "I'll bring your names to Vegita's attention and he'll give you both freedman's insignia and royal courier seals so you can be more effective and move around with greater ease."

"He is granting freedom to anyone who aids him against Mousrom," Scopa told Zarbon, his eyes shining. "You'll be free."

"Okay," I said and set my jaw. This next bit wasn't going to go down as smoothly. "Step two is the implementation of my 'stalemate shield' on every inhabited planet in the galactic community."

"What does this new machine of yours do?" Zarbon already seemed wary.

"It is an impenetrable planet-encasing shield," I said flatly. "I will stop the war by the oldest precept of schoolyard politics. If you can't stop two kids from fighting, separate them. The Red Demons won't be able to bomb any more worlds. The Saiyans won't be able to purge anymore worlds. I'm going to mass produce the shield throughout the Saiyan Empire first, then I'm going to find a way to leak the technology to the Rebel worlds as well. And that will be it. For a time, they'll keep trying to attack each other, but I'm not exaggerating when I say the shield is impenetrable-and having the technology yourself won't help you breach someone else's shield. After a while, even the most stubborn warhawks will give up. Stalemate."

"Goddess," Scopa whispered after a moment. "It might really work."

Zarbon was silent, staring at me closely the way people do when they think you might have gone around the proverbial bend for the last time.

"You haven't yet said what will become of us and all the millions of other non-Saiyans who will be trapped inside these shields on Imperial worlds, never to be freed. Or any uncharted worlds the Saiyans will fall upon and enslave or purge in the future. What is your plan for them?"

"That's step three," I said.

"What is step three?" He asked softly.

I took a deep breath. "Put a new king on the throne."

He sucked in a slow, steady lungfull of air. Trying to calm himself. "A new king? I hope to the gods you mean Bardock. I might actually be able to swallow that. The prince killed your family, love. And Hiru's. And countless, countless others. Have you...is she mad, Scopa?"

"You haven't seen him yet," Scopa told him. "The prince is different."

"You mean he's...what?" A small vicious smile played around his mouth. "I hear tell he may have become feeble-minded after his stay on Avaris. Is it true, Bulma?"

"He...He's just not the same." Scopa had taken several steps toward his lover. It took me a moment or two to realize he had placed himself directly between Zarbon and myself. "Imagine if you broke something ill-made, and a good person put it back together again. Perhaps the way it always should have been."

"Who put him back together, love?" Zarbon was so still he could have been made of stone. "Yourself and Bulma?"

"Yes."

"I can stop the war, Zarbon," I said, wishing I could pour all I believed to be true into the words to make him see how it could be.

"What if no more Saiyans or Red Network or Rebels or innocents caught in the crossfire had to die?" Scopa asked him. He had taken his lover's hands, was holding them so tightly I could see the blue of Zarbon's fingers pinched to white. "What if no more planets had to be purged, no more children of any race had to die screaming in the flames of their burning worlds? I know they destroyed your world, just as they destroyed Madran. I know you are...are sympathetic to the rebels. But wouldn't that be worth letting the Saiyans live on?" I saw the horror and sadness in Scopa's face that Zarbon even had to think about it, had to weigh the cold joy of revenge against billions of lives. "No one else has to die. Isn't that what you want, Zarbon?" Scopa's voice was pleading. Pleading that the honest answer was yes. "What do you want, Zarbon-kun? The Red Prince's warriors...The things I hear that they have done...I think some of them have killed so many people there's no difference between them and the Saiyans who purged their worlds and enslaved them. I would...I would never want to see that happen to anyone I loved." Zarbon made a soft sound and bent his head forward, his forehead touching Scopa's. "You told me once that what you wanted most in the galaxy was for us to live on some peaceful green world where you could open a chef's school, where the only injuries I treated would be the skinned knees of children who fell out of trees. Do you still want that?"

"Trust me, Zarbon," I begged softly. "You know better than anyone that I can build what I say I can."

"Okay..." He breathed. "Okay. If the two of you have some galactic peace engine in one hand and the Saiyan no Ouji in the other, I will believe anything you say. But the Red Demons, and Jeiyce, will never give up their fight, Bulma. They will never stop."

"If you bang your head up against a brick wall long enough," I said. "Eventually you get a headache and give up. And I've designed the mother of all brick walls."

I went on rounds, taking a great deal of pleasure in the surprised and pleased hugs and words of greeting from almost everyone I knew. I felt better and happier and more full of hope than I could remember since I was a young girl.

At noon, we went out to watch the show. Vegita had decided to show the entire Capital in a very sensational way just how weak he isn't. He was fighting more than a dozen warriors at a time, pounding them to a pulp and throwing their unconscious bodies down onto the city like cannonballs.

Scopa leaned over and grinned down at me. "He's tossing them into the main offices of Central Intelligence."

I grinned back.

Zarbon found me alone just before I left Med Center for the day. He looked like a man whose entire world is on the verge of over-turning, who had just made a decision that he sorely hoped he wouldn't live to regret.

"I took care of the twins," he said shortly.

I tensed. "Took care of?"

"I reassigned them to a port city in the south to count troops being shipped offworld," he said. "You realize I am betraying my prince, Bulma."

"He won't see it that way when I send you to him with the plans for the stalemate shield," I said. "He'll never know you did anything other than steal the plans when the moment was right. Even without the twins around to snoop on me, the Netwrok will find out I'm the one who designed the shield as soon as it goes into production, I know that. I don't give a damn. Let them write me down in their histories as a traitorous bitch from Hell, as long of they and their families and all the Rebels worlds are alive and well to hate me for the rest of their long, happy lives!"

"I told the twins they were not mistaken when they told me the Prince

might still be mad," he said grimly. "I have told the other Network operatives in Med Center and the Capital the same thing. That the Saiyan no Ouji is no longer himself. That he is still mad and is completely under your thumb, and thus Jeiyce's, and the machines you will be building for the Prince in the next few weeks will see an early end to this war. That will keep them from coming after you when it becomes known what you are doing for the Prince."

"Thank you," I said softly.

"Don't fail, Bulma," he replied a thread of terror and anger under the quiet baritone of his voice. "All out lives are in your hands."

"I won't," I whispered.

It was almost night when I got back to the villa. I had decapsulated the servo bots before I left and remote activated them to start dinner an hour ago. The smell of roasting meat and grilled vegetables was mouth watering and the sound of the bots' busy whirring in the kitchen sounded like...like home. Like Momma's kitchen. I went to my little workshop and decapsulated my small stalemate shield prototype, tinkering with the last little kinks until I heard the sound of mens' growling laughter in the hearthroom. I joined them by way of the kitchen, making sure the bots were working properly. I could hear Vegita giving Rom-kun serious instruction on how to keep the dogs from drowning him in canine saliva, but there was an undercurrent in the hard tones his voice that was the same soft gentleness he had used to read my baby a story every night for the last... I stopped and sighed heavily, fighting back the sting of tears, grieving for the man he had been yesterday. Would he ever read Rom-kun a story again? There were so many things that I couldn't even let myself hope for. I had to treat all my personal hopes as though they had been dashed irreparably. There was too much about this new man I didn't know, too many things that might have reverted back to...to before.

I grabbed up a tankard of goldberry wine from the cooler and three glasses, and stepped through the swinging kitchen doors. Rom-kun was wrestling Baka to the floor, cheering his own victory.

"Gotcha!" Romayn bawled.

"Should he be speaking at this age?" Vegita was sitting back in his favorite blackwood hearthside chair. I had a sudden, cold image of myself sitting beside that chair at his feet like an obedient dog, sipping the _susaji_-laced goldberry wine he gave me. I wondered faintly as I forced the memory down into the cold pit of night that was the hate dragon's prison, if he would mind if I destroyed that chair. Maybe with an axe.

"The child development texts in the incu-ward say no." I told them in a remarkably cheerful voice. Both men were happily bloody and bruised. They drank down the glasses of wine I poured them in one gulp. "Not in whole sentences anyway," I went on, pouring both of them another glass. "I think it's just inherent Saiyan preciousness and an uncommon amount of early mental stimulation that-what?" Both men had frozen, gazing at the bots setting the dining table behind me as though they were some kind of tentacled monsters. I fought not to roll my eyes.

"Have neither of you seen a servo-bot before?"

"Momma made 'em," Rom-kun said.

"They can do everything a humanoid slave can do, they don't need to sleep or eat, and they tend to make fewer mistakes. Try them this one time. If they still give you the creeps, we can have Batha and Caddi, or someone else replace them." I scooped Rom-kun up under one arm. It would be a cold day in Hell before I let Batha or Caddi back in this house. "Are you hungry, Rom-kun? Or did you fill up on dog hair?"

"I'm hungry!" He cried, wiggling out of my arms. I set him on his feet, feeling a little sad that he was getting so big. He was going to be too big to carry soon. I let them all eat their fill, then dropped both bombs on them. The capsule technology I had 'cracked', and the stalemate shield. Rom-kun made a soft sound of wonder when I ordered Bardock to try and blast my little shield. He always stared in envious wonder every time he saw someone level a ki blast these days. His Saiyan nature was nowhere near as banked and 'gentled' as Bardock seemed to think.

"You-you-" It was more gratifying than I would have ever imagined to see Vegita sputtering and all but speechless in the aftermath of the first little demo of my shield. Whatever he had expected, it sure as hell hadn't been anything of this magnitude. "Woman, you-"

"We had a technology very, very similar to the Red Demons' miniaturization science on Chikyuu," I told him. "I started out with pieces of the puzzle no one else knew. But the safety shield is all my own. I'm pretty proud of how well it turned out."

He still looked dazed, but he was recovering fast, the wheels in his mind beginning to turn, beginning to see the full impact of what I had just given him. "Woman...this will give us the breathing room we need from their cloaked sneak attacks!"

An hour later, the King, Turna and Articha all crowded around the dining table for a second demonstration of the capsules and my shield. When Bardock performed the test for the royal audience a second time, Rom-kun was ready this time, leaping up with a tiny crow of delight and catching the silvery globe as it flew off the blackwood dining table. Articha chuckled and plucked him out of the air, passing him back to me like a small football. I caught Vegita's eyes, saw the poorly hidden smirk, and smiled back.

The King was silent for a long time, glaring daggers at me under those heavy brows. Partly because he had just seen the look his son and I had exchanged and marked it as another sign of the changes in Vegita. Partly because I think he was inches from making the connection, from realizing I was the Mastertech. I could also see him turning over each and every implication of such a defensive technology in his mind. Slowly his mouth curled into a grin. Then he burst unexpectedly into a loud, hearty chuckle.

"I have seldom been so glad as I am at this moment to have spared someone's life, girl!" He said at last.

I had just handed his sorry ass the key to the salvation of his race and this was all he could think of to say to me? I lowered my eyes to keep from glaring at him.

"Though," he went on darkly, drilling into me with that x-ray stare of his, "I think you are too dangerous to run loose in my Empire."

You're welcome, you old bastard, I nearly said aloud.

Vegita-ou and Turna went into an organizational frenzy, Vegita went off into the back of the house for something, and Articha and I were left staring at each other in silence. She gave me with an unflinching Saiyan gaze that gave nothing away. I stared back, not knowing what I should say. Asking how she had been would be a bad idea. I knew how she had been. Not good. I wondered if she had let herself cry. I wanted to tell her that if you don't cry for what they took from you that you run the risk of dying inside. But...there was no way to broach the subject that would not give mortal insult to her warrior's pride. The pride they had not managed to crush or bow in six months of...of...

There were so many ways we could help each other if we could only talk about it.

And that would never happen.

She finally broke the silence. "He is strong," she murmured. "Bardock's son. He will be flying before the summer is out."

"His brother, Raditz, flew at three years," I said quietly. "I think it's a family trait."

She nodded soberly, frowning at the mention of Raditz name. "The sons of the Turrasht tribes are good soldiers to have at your back. My father forbade me to wed Turna at first because his mother was Turrashti and of common birth." She snorted. "He was a fool. Anyone who is semi-literate and has read the histories of our people knows that Turrasht is a well spring of royal blood from days when Vegita the Super Saiyan, our first true king, still lived. The first Vegita-ou had seven sons, six of whom went south to the mountains of Turrasht and carved out their own baronies. You can see the marks of it to this day. Raditz' hair grew in the widow's peak pattern that is only found in the royal house. Turna's hair is the same. That offends many Northerners."

"Seeing poor, back country warriors," I said, " whose bloodline is a direct line of descent from the Legendary and who can claim blood kinship with the throne, must eat some of the Northern Elites alive with jealously."

She chuckled softly at this, but the smile slipped away after only a second or two. "The Prince must take care to seem harder, girl, or the nobles will think him weak, however strong he is in body."

"I know," I said. "He knows."

"How is it with him truly?"

I held her eyes, and decided on the truth. "For...for a long time, he couldn't remember who he was or anything of his past. In the space of maybe a few weeks, it was as though he...grew up all over again, from little boy to man."

She studied me closely and as she did, a kind of harsh tension seemed to ebb out of her. "And you reared him from the second childhood in the same gentle fashion you are raising Bardock's son. I understand now."

"I was kind to him," I said, wondering what fear, or maybe what regret, my answer had put to rest for her. I didn't have to wait long to find out.

"I was his mother's friend," she told me. "And for that, Nappa always hated me as he hated anyone who took even the least of her affections. So, he kept me distant from the babe as he grew. I could have prevailed on the King, as my house is older, my line stronger, than Nappa's. I might have fostered the Prince with my own sons on my own estates in the north. I did not. I was a fool, but I blamed the babe and his sire for the death of my friend and wanted no part of him."

I closed my eyes, because I could see in my mind the sort of man this woman would have raised Vegita to become. So many, many things might have been different if she had.

"I can see in him now the man he might have been had someone other than that great imbecile reared him," she said, speaking my thoughts aloud. "I was not sure of him when he came to Council this morning. I needed to be sure of what manner of man he is now. And to see how you are fairing with him." She bared her teeth in suppressed emotion, and you could have frozen a sun with her voice alone. "I am different now, as well. And I could not now serve the man he once was."

I didn't reply. There was nothing that needed to be said. She picked up Rom-kun, who had been sitting silently on the floor between us, and held him up for inspection. "How long can you keep your feet off the ground before you must touch down again, boy?"

She listened to his explanation of how his hovering skills were being seriously hampered by the dogs' habit of grabbing his feet and pulling him back to the ground.

"They'd be sad if I flew away and left them," he told her. "Can doggies fly, Momma?"

"I don't think so, sweetie."

"Do not soften your Prince's heart too greatly, girl," she said over Rom-kun's head. "They will kill him for it."

"How?" I asked. She stared at me in confusion. "He was the strongest warrior born to your race in centuries," I went on. "What do you think his ki reading is now, after being tortured like that for months on end?"

"Gods...my gods, girl." But her shock was quickly being replaced with a small, relieved half-grin.

"I don't think a thousand warriors, or ten thousand, could kill him now," I said, wondering why no one other than myself, Bardock and Scopa had realized that.

Vegita came back into the hearthroom, the dogs padding behind him. He dropped a bound text in my lap and pointed. "Can you build this, with a few modifications? As an added feature of your shield?"

It was a Zapria-jin rad plasma stabilizer for converting heavier elements into a lower energy solidity. Added to my shield, it would provide an added layer of safety. It would turn a plasma nuke into a huge hunk of metal and coal in seconds.

I smiled up at him. "Yes. I can build it."

He left to find his father and Turna. I began working on adding the stabilizer to the full sized shield specs. Articha stayed and we talked late into the night while I worked. I like her.

She and Turna are coming to dinner tomorrow night.

He came back to the villa a little after dawn with Turna in tow. Vegita came back into my workroom after they were gone and stood watching me for a moment. I knew Bardock and Rom-kun were bedded down in the library with the dogs.

"Almost done," I said as he walked up behind me, looking down over my shoulder at what I'd spent all night bringing to life on my drafting table.

"You had this workroom in here all along," he murmured with a frown. I craned my neck around, all the relaxed pleasure of having spent hours working over the addition to the shield gone in an instant. But there was no suspicion in his eyes, no hint of what I knew his father suspected.

"It's what I do," I said, slowly relaxing again. "What I was raised to be and what I love. It kept me sane until Rom-kun came."

He nodded soberly. "Your eyes are heavy," he said. He took my hand and I let him lead me back to bed. He lay down beside me on his side, not touching, just gazing at me with the dark, gentle eyes of the man I had loved until yesterday. It was the first time he had ever noticed I was underslept or tired. No...he had noticed that lots of times in Bardock's house, hadn't he? They were both the same man...I shoved it all aside before it began to give me a headache.

I thought about it, about what I wanted right now. The dragon only grumbled and shifted once in her dark cell before lapsing into silence. Maybe she was sleepy, too. I took his arm and drew it around me, curling into his embrace, and his eyes said it was much more than he had expected. I kissed him once chastely and was asleep in seconds.

The dogs have developed bad habits in Turrasht. I took them to work and they made a b-line for the garden conservatory in the center of the main medical complex. They promptly relieved themselves everywhere they could think of, marking this new territory-I guess they didn't remember having been puppies here-as their own. Then, they began to dig up my flowers. I have to think of a solution to this while my secondary garden is still salvageable. Zarbon told me he had a couple of ideas and that the dogs still look delicious. They hate him, which is strange because Saiyans are more carnivores by nature than Rashia-jin, and I think he decided to dislike them out of hurt feelings more than anything else.

It's been a couple of weeks since I wrote last. Gods, where do I start catching up?

I've been dividing my time between helping prep Med Center to cloister roughly thirty thousand onworld children for the month preceding Moontime. The moon won't rise until this fall, still weeks and weeks away, but there's a lot to do. The other half of my time is spent working on the shield factories, and making copies of servo-bots designed for security mode, a mode that will detect movement and air temperature change even if it's ocular sensors detect nothing in the visual spectrum. This will keep Jeiyce's men from taking out the factories, or shield generators later on, while cloaked in invisibility shields. I could design a spectrum particle beam that would break down the cloaking shields' light refraction all together, but...I learned the hard way not to give anyone any sort of technology that can be used to kill. A particle beam that destroyed the Rebels invisibility shields would end up being used to massacre whole Rebel worlds. So, no. I have to think through everything I build from now on, and dole it out with a spoon even then.

Zarbon and Bardock have developed this wary sort of friendship as they began working side by side on 'step one', doing countless sneaky things all over the Capital in the name of ruining Mousrom. It took me a while to figure out where all the tension between them was coming from. I knew Bardock knew about Zarbon's wandering feet and tendency to leave his assigned posts whenever the mood struck him. He had no suspicions as to Zarbon's true activity and had written it off to the fact that some people where too clever and independent to take well to having their lives ordered by another. It's strange, so strange, that Bardock sees this, understands it, and yet sees nothing really wrong with slavery in general.

They haven't let me in on any of the covert things they do for Vegita, and that bugs the hell out of me. I've taken to sort of eavesdropping on them out of nothing more than a childish feeling of being left out, but up til today they've been very good at finding secret places to talk. Vegita won't tell me shit either. He only grunted when I asked him and told me the less I know the better. Which means what Zarbon and Bardock are doing is very dangerous.

Early this morning, I went down into the bottom level of storage to hunt for a hundred or so outmoded incu-pods someone sort of mislaid ten years ago, pods we'll need desperately in a few weeks. I had been rooting around among the giant crates and dust bunnies in one dark corner of the tech supply section for about ten minutes when Zarbon's disembodied voice brought me up short.

"He won't be working as a lure for Mousrom ever again," Zarbon said grimly. "I made sure of that."

"You realize if you're caught with Saiyan blood on your hands, there's nothing I or even the Prince himself can do to stop your death," Bardock said shortly.

"I knew that going in," Zarbon told him. "Besides...you're just miffed I killed him and you didn't."

"He lured Bardock-san's squad brother into Mousrom's hands." I jumped when I recognized Hiru's voice. They must all be on the other side of the wall in the o.b. supply warehouse. "Of course Bardock-san begrudges you the kill."

"I begrudge him nothing," Bardock snapped. "But if he'd had the presence of mind to keep the bastard alive, we could have taken him before the King himself as proof that Mousrom is torturing Saiyans. And that, Rashia-jin, could have been the Inquisitor's downfall."

"There were too many people around," Zarbon muttered. "I couldn't have overpowered him and brought him out of Kharda alive. As it stands now, Mousrom will think he left Kharda and met with misfortune in the Capital. Nachti shoved all that was left of him in the incinerator, and that is the best we could do."

"If he'd disappeared from there," Hiru's voice trembled, "Nachti and all the other Med Center conscripts would have been dead before the night was through. Zarbon did what was right, Bardock-san."

"And Mousrom was well pleased with the meal I cooked," Zarbon added blandly. "I will be requisitioned to Kharda again. So, there will be another chance soon to pilfer the records we want. If you don't trust my instincts as amateur spy, trust them as a chef who knows the quickest way to a fat man's heart." There was a little silence. "Are we done here? I've got a long letter disc from Nachti, Hiru."

Hiru made some wordless noise of joy. He sounded more alive and alert than he had been since we returned from Bardock's house. Since Nachti had been taken to Kharda. "Thank you, Zarbon!" he said softly.

"We are done here," Bardock replied. "Go and find your mate, Zarbon. He will not sleep until he knows you still live."

Zarbon made a noise that sounded like uncomfortable agreement, and I suddenly realized that Bardock had taken an almost paternal stance toward a certain young Madrani doctor where Zarbon was concerned-and he wasn't completely sure Zarbon was good enough for Scopa.

I raised one fist and pounded on the wall. "Psst!" I said.

Cold, frightened silence.

"It's me-Bulma, dammit!" I said louder, not wanting to be shot through the wall. "I just thought you covert ops guys ought to know I can hear every word you're saying from the tech supply rooms next door."

No one answered me. But I think the silence that greeted me this time seemed distinctly embarrassed. Huh. So much for their boys only spy club.

It's late evening of the same day. They all gave me sheepish looks when we met up in the surgery.

"The Prince didn't want you involved in what we are doing," Bardock told me. "You are at risk as it is to be taken by Mousrom because you are his enemy's concubine. We will not give him a valid reason."

I frowned, feeling childish and rebellious about that, at having been so summarily excluded from this by a conspiracy of all the men in my life, when I had set our whole little 'end the war party' in motion to begin with. Even Scopa had been in on it.

"Don't get in a snit, girl," Bardock had been watching the play of thoughts across my face with a faint grin. "It's not as though you do not have enough to do."

I am a free royal concubine. That's what Bardock called me today. I've known that intellectually for two weeks now, but haven't really tried it on for size yet.

Today, as we ate lunch in the staff commissary, one of Mousrom's top aids, Oriff, payed Med Center a visit. He came with a requisition order from Mousrom to round up five new medics for the 'Kharda facility'. He marched in on us, his personal guard of a dozen men behind him. Bardock told me Mousrom and all of his aids have to take bodyguards with them wherever they go these days to be safe from their own people. Big surprise there, though I have a private suspicion that Bardock and Zarbon know a lot more about Mousrom's top people dropping out of sight lately than they let on.

"I'll take this one," he said, grabbing the arm of a woman I knew was Red Network and pulling her to her feet like a rag doll. "And...let's see. You!" He pointed straight at Scopa, who sat beside me, open-mouthed, feeding Rom-kun his share of paya pudding.

"You can't take the head of surgery!" I was on my feet before I realized what I had done. "Who the hell is going to lead the surgical unit the next time we get a rush of wounded?"

"Not him, pretty!" He said, looking me up and down. "I think I'll take you too," he leered unpleasantly and grabbed me by the wrist so hard I cried out.

"We should not fight our own kind in time of war," Bardock said dangerously from just behind me, "So, I will not kill you if you let the woman go now."

Zarbon was standing beside him, poised like a cocked gun, and I could see that all of Bardock's squad was moving in, teeth bared like a wolf pack in anticipation of a fight. Everyone not Saiyan was taking cover beneath the dining tables.

"I am a servant of the Lord Inquisitor Mousrom, soldier," Oriff said, his hold on my wrist tightening painfully. "I will take your woman and there is nothing you can do to stop me."

"I'm not Bardock's woman," I hissed into Oriff's face. "I am Bulma of Chikyuu, royal concubine to the Saiyan no Ouji." His sneering face froze. He had seen the show over the Capital two weeks ago. He knew, despite the nasty rumors and whispers Mousrom's people have been cranking out, that Vegita was back and well and stronger than ever. "You're not taking anyone from Med Center, Oriff." I said coldly. "The wounded, the true soldiers of Vegita-sei, need them more than your torture factory. If you turn around and leave right now, I might find it in my heart to beg my Prince to spare your life for having laid hands on me. If not, I'll step back and let Bardock and his brothers kill you now." I let that sink in. But the shock had worn off. Or maybe Oriff just knew Mousrom would kill him for coming back empty-handed.

"Do you think, you jumped up little whore," he spat softly at me. "That Mousrom fears a mad raving weakling?" He twisted my wrist again, and this time I felt the bone give way with an audible pop.

A hand closed over his forearm and crushed it like brittle kindling. Then he was flying backwards through the wall behind him, bright sunlight filtering in through the hole his body had just made, a the new, ragged door onto the tranpo landing pad. I was falling backwards into Vegita's arms. Rom-kun was screaming in the background, and Scopa's voice was hushing him in soothing tones. He ran forward and put Rom-kun in the good arm I was holding up, beckoning him to bring me my baby.

"Momma's okay, sweetie!" I said over and over as Vegita eased me down to the floor.

"Bardock," Vegita ground out. "Take the fight out onto the landing pad. Send their bodies back to Mousrom."

"Yes, my Prince!" Bardock said with black joy.

I could hear the men's angry voices cursing and the sound of ki blasts being fired behind us. Scopa was telling Nail this was something he should take care of, and Rom-kun was still screaming in fear for me. Then, Vegita snatched him out of my arms just before a white glare blinded me.

And I lost it.

The sensation of having a terrified screaming baby torn from my arms, the sight of Vegita's face twisted in a towering rage, even if it was for my sake, was too many memory triggers back to the night of Karot-kun's death.

"Give him back!" I was shrieking like a mad woman, deaf to Scopa's soft voice, struggling in Vegita's gentle grip as he held me in one arm and Rom-kun in the other. "Give me my baby! Give him to me!"

"Not until he calms," Vegita said in an even voice. "His power is too close to the surface. Romayn." That soft voice of command made Rom-kun stop squirming to get to me. If I hadn't flown into hysterics, I'd have noticed before that moment that Rom-kun's wails had stopped the instant Vegita took him from my arms. Now, my son was looking up at Vegita with wide attentive eyes, wiping tears from his face with one chubby fist. Vegita touched Rom-kun's forehead lightly, concentrating.

"Do you feel that, boy?"

"Uh-huh," Rom-kun sniffled.

"Push it down, back down to where it was before, and I will let Bulma hold you. If you touch her while it is still out of control, you will hurt her."

"...'kay." Rom-kun's little face screwed up in concentration, and I watched, fascinated, as Nail gently probed the bones in my wrist. I heard him murmur, "Simple fracture..." softly, and felt a warm streaming pulse as he healed the break. I wasn't even looking down at the miracle of Nail's healing power. I was too focused on the small miracle in front of me. Vegita's face wasn't soft or loving, it wasn't the open expression of the man who had lived in Bardock's house, but... You could see the love there, evident as the sun on a cloudless day. Love for Rom-kun.

He sat Rom-kun in my lap, his face a portrait of Saiyan stoicism, and I smiled up at him with my whole heart. And he smiled back.

All of Med Center saw it.

They were hanging back, most still in their lunch chairs, or under them, though some had crowded through the hole in the wall Vegita had made with Oriff's body, watching Bardock and his brothers beat the stuffing out of Oriff's men, cheering like kids at a baseball game. But people saw. Saw it and marked it and tucked it away to tell later to whatever side of the conflict they served. Though the interpretation was pretty much the same universally.

They think Vegita's out of his fucking mind. That he's completely in my power. Which adds merit to the lies Zarbon has told all the Red Network operatives in his planetwide cell, but is very, very bad for Vegita's reputation among his own people. It lends credence to everything Mousrom had been whispering in the ears of the Elites since Vegita returned.

Dammit. It's a sign of the madness of Saiyan society in general that he is being smeared as someone who's become soft-headed for the sin of not behaving like an insane bastard from Hell. For acting like a sane man.

He carried me back to my too-often used cot in my little workroom beside Scopa's offices, and I was too drowsy to even sit up by the time he lay me down. Nail's power always induces a healing sleep, but I was fighting it, because something awful had just occurred to me. I gripped his collar as he lay me on the cot, frowning up at him. "Don't you dare kill Bardock."

He smirked down at me. "Bardock has made himself indispensable to me, woman. Though as thanks for having stood by and let you be injured, I think he will spar with me at length after he is through with Oriff."

I sank back down and sighed, falling asleep almost instantly.

Hiru was sitting by the bed when I woke. He and I hadn't really broached the matter, and I still hadn't given everyone a piece of my mind about letting him take part in the dangerous extra curricular activities of the what Scopa has dubbed the "Blue Network"-blue for the signature color of Med Center and all healers on Vegita-sei, not for my hair.

"You look good," I said softly. Rom-kun was not beside me, but I could hear his laughter in Scopa's office, and the sound of Scopa reading in a low voice. Some story about a flying cho-deer. It was bothering Rom-kun more and more that the dogs were never going to learn to fly, I thought drowsily. At least I wouldn't ever have the broach the painful subject of short canine life expectancy with him. I reworked the dogs' genes to give them a natural lifespan of about 70 years. Heh. Baka and Yaro might actually learn to fly in that time.

Hiru smiled down at me, looking so much like his old self I wanted to cry. "I feel good. Better. I wanted to talk to you before you lay into Scopa for letting 'poor sick Hiru' in on your project."

I looked up at him, worried and embarrassed at the same time. "You don't need to do this, Hiru."

"I do," he said. "Scopa knew it would bring me back from the edge of that deep pit. I know you know the one I mean. You have been there. He told me about your plan. The whole plan where everyone lives to see tomorrow." The look on my face must have been something to see. "Don't be mad at Scopa," he went on. "It was what I needed. It's given me purpose, something to do other than sit and sink down into myself. And more direct contact with Nachti than I would have had otherwise. The Network..." His ivory face turned cold, his huge circle-shaped Ansousei-jin eyes black with anger. "They didn't lift a hand to help her when Mousrom took her. So, to hell with them. The Network has high minded words when they take you in, but it is really all about revenge, and nothing beyond that. No one can say what will happen when we finally pull down the Saiyans and slay them to the last man. It's madness to think that they could all be slain in any case. The war will drag out and drag out, until trillions upon trillions are slain, and in the end the galaxy will tear itself apart. It already has. Surviving the sort of things you and I have suffered is all about hope and having someone who loves you, Bulma-chan. It keeps your mind strong and keeps you alive when what you've suffered should have killed you a dozen times over. I want a life with Nachti, not a grave on the alter of vengeance. And I think your plan will work. After today, I am sure of it." He frowned, eyes turning inward. "My people had a saying that revenge is a path that winds in a circle. It's a cycle that has no end. I would like to see the Prince die a terrible death, Bulma-chan. For Noira and Dusca, for Raditz and Karot-chan. But if it means that the war ends, that Nachti and I have a long life together, and unnumbered legions of innocents are not slain, then...let him live and rule his people behind the other half of your dividing peace shield. To have survived him is victory enough."

I had begun crying somewhere in the middle of this and he touched my face, his dark eyes full of terrible worry. "Scopa says he believes the Prince will free all slaves in the Empire when he takes his father's throne. Is this true? Do you have him so completely under your thumb as that? Or would I be leaving you to...to a lifetime of horror if I left Vegita-sei with Nachti to seek a new life? I will not do that, Bulma-chan."

"It's not horror," I said slowly, choosing my words with care. I didn't want to lie, but I knew he would never believe Vegita was stone cold sane in a million years. And in ten times that span of time, I could never explain what was between Vegita and myself. Not to him. "It's like you saw today. He's like that all the time since he came back. You won't be leaving me to a nightmare, but I can't come with you and Nachti when this is all over either. I have to stay with him and...and help him do the right thing. For all our sakes."

"You do not deserve to be sacrificed like this," he said softly.

"I'm not a sacrifice," I said firmly. "I have family and friends...and I have Rom-kun."

He nodded soberly and left me after a smattering of small talk about how big Rom-kun was getting, asking if my baby had really been on the point of a spontaneous ki-blast. I lay back and thought about that. Rom-kun wasn't like other Saiyan children. Everyone who knew him knew that. He was going to have to begin learning to control his power soon. I sighed and drifted back to sleep, wishing irrationally that he could stay little forever.

Work, work, work.

I'm so fucking sleeeepy.

We built a full sized proto-type shield to test on one of Vegita-sei's sister worlds and tested it. It worked like a dream. We sent six carriers full of plasma nukes to strike Six-that's the Saiyan's imaginative name for the sixth world in their solar system. The shield held. In the secondary test we threw a pile of bombs through the initial net around the planet, to simulate some enterprising Network terrorists smuggling a bomb onto Vegita-sei itself. The rad stabilizer built into the shield turned the bombs to coal dust.

We celebrated in fine old Saiyan style. Everyone, Bardock's crew, Scopa, Hiru, even Zarbon who never drinks to excess, got snockered. Only Vegita remained sober, watching everyone with a cold hard face that still showed the immense satisfaction lurking just below the surface. We had this little shindig in the surgery after hours, and woke up a few people from the nearest suites of the residential quarter. Several of them joined us. I have this muzzy memory of dancing with Scopa, and of Rom-kun giggling on the floor beside Vegita's chair, looking up at Vegita with wide sleepy eyes, saying, "Momma's being silly, Edeeta."

Hiru left early. I didn't blame him. It was hard for him to be in the same room with Vegita, though he kept his distance and tried to enjoy himself. Everyone else tapered away, until it was just myself and Vegita. I could hear Scopa laughing softly as Zarbon led him in a happy weaving gait to their apartments. I watched them go, and only then thought to look to see where Rom-kun had gotten himself to. I had taken an alcohol absorption hypo half an hour before, after I began to feel queasy, and now I was completely sober, but I had not thought to find out who, if anyone, had taken Rom-kun for the night. I found him soon enough. Vegita was still sitting in the chair he had not moved from most of the night. Rom-kun lying curled up in one of Vegita arms, little head on his chest. They were both fast asleep. I stood there transfixed, thinking how Vegita was the only person I'd ever know who could actually fall asleep in a chair as easily as a bed. He spent so much of himself, every ounce of strength he had, in anything he set his hand to. When he slept, it was always deep and profound...and wherever was most convenient. I moved silently to his chair and leaned forward to kiss his mouth, but I stopped, simply looking at his face, this face I had hated more than anything in creation, now so different from nothing more than internal change that I might not have recognized-

"I will not let you destroy him."

I turned and saw the burly form standing in the doorway of the surgery, sans Royal Guard, fists clenched at his sides like a man preparing for battle. He had probably come to covertly congratulate his son on today's success. I stood and moved across the few meters that separated us, not waking Vegita. I stopped when I was just out of arms' reach of this man who wanted so desperately to kill me and could not, not yet. Because he had never once in his life put his own feelings before the good of his people and his world.

"I won't destroy him," I said softly.

"You may have convinced yourself of that, girl," said the King of Vegita-sei in a low rumble. "You may tell yourself that you have all that you lost- a son and a kind lover and your freedom. Perhaps it is even true. But _cho-gugol_ is not so easily laid to rest. It will burn a hole in your heart and mind to have its way."

I felt a chill waft through me. "I'm not Saiyan," I whispered.

"You are...more than you know," the King chuckled mirthlessly. "If you have been born Saiyan, girl, I would force him into the marriage bed with you with all my might. But you are not, and I will not see him pollute the blood of the Legendary's line with alien weakness, or tear my Empire asunder by setting you on the throne beside him."

Some reckless impulse made me answer him back, made me look him in the eye without pretense or humility. "Do you really think I am a weak woman, Ou-sama?"

He took my chin in his hard hand, forcing me to meet his eyes. "No, I do not," he growled. He stepped forward, so close I could feel his breath on my cheeks. "Have you forgotten the sight of Nappa crushing the life out of your first born, Bulma of Chikyuu?" I made a soft moaning sound, closing my eyes, and he nodded. "I did not think so. Look at me." The last was almost kindly, as close to gentle as I'd ever heard his voice. I opened my eyes. "There is too much blood debt between the two of you," he said. "All that might have been good is poisoned, girl. It will be the death of you both if you stay at his side."

I was shaking all over from the cold, horrible truth I felt in his words. I couldn't speak for a moment. "You want me to leave him?"

"When the war is won," he murmured, "I will give you wealth and a ship. Take as many retainers with you as seems good to you. Take Bardock and his son. But go and do not return. If you value my son at all, you will do this." He dropped his hand and turned to leave. "If you do not, I will see you dead before my ashes are scattered from atop Cho-tal."

It was a long time before I went back and woke Vegita to fly us home.

Oh gods...when did I start thinking of his villa as home?

Vegita took me to the Royal College of Engineers today, then to the long, neat line of factories in the eastern wastelands to tweek the guard bots and check the assembly lines one more time before they go online tomorrow.

The Royal College is set up in circular stadium seating, each rising tier being another magnitude of height in the pecking order of that august body. I knew they had initially rejected my designs as undevlopable fantasies, then recanted after Vegita-ou overruled them. Now, I needed them to help with offworld assembly as soon as the plants began pumping out finished shields. Vegita took me to their guildhall just off the main sprawl of the royal palace and left me there with Bardock standing at my shoulder as guard. They waited until they were sure he was gone, then they looked down their noses at me, one and all, as I stood in the center of the floor level petitioner's dock. They were all male, all Saiyan except for a few Madrani aids, and all arrogant assholes who couldn't follow the 3-D instruction graphics I'd taken special care to see were over-simplified just for them. So, of course, they concluded the shield wouldn't work as assembled, and the Mastertech of the Imperial College of Engineers himself suggested that I might have perpetrated the most audacious hoax of the century.

"Do you mean to say, Master Uretiss," said a young warrior from the first level, least senior bench row of the College tiers. "That the King has been fool enough to let himself be defrauded by a concubine?" The young man looked oddly familiar, though I knew I'd never seen him before. He was wearing the insignia of the Engineering Corp on his armor. He wasn't part of the Royal College of Engineers then. Which meant he built machines instead of just theorized about what might be possible to build.

Uretiss opened his mouth to speak, thought better of it, then closed it quickly. The other, lesser Mastertechs on the high bench beside him were watching avidly, knowing that if he did indeed suggest that the King had let himself be conned by little me, one of them would be sitting in his seat this time tomorrow.

Finally, he spoke, red-faced with anger. "Explain it again, woman."

They gave me their fucking stamp of approval. After the young engineer's one briefs question, they didn't dare vote against me. I suggested sweetly that I not trouble such important men as themselves with the leg work of shield assembly, and they gratefully assigned the Engineering Corp to me. Bardock told me after I went over the assembly plans with the senior E-Corp engineers that the young man's name was Okuda. He's Articha and Turna's youngest son.

Not much time to talk. Too much to do. Gods, I'm tired.

I found Vegita in the garden last night. He goes out there every night to sit by himself, a kind of personal 'alone time', though he'll let Rom-kun play out there with him. Rom-kun's taken up this nasty habit of stomping the garden slugs and feeding them to the dogs. I told Vegita not to let him track the slugs in the house and he sort of grunted a yes at me. I don't know why this bothers me, except that I hate the thought of Rom-kun killing anything, even something as disgusting as the slugs that have been trying to chew up my roses all summer.

I went out to the garden last night to look for Rom-kun, not having heard Bardock arrive and take his son back to the library to sleep. Vegita didn't see me. He was sitting ramrod straight on one of my blackwood benches, his face drawn with tension. Then he released a dot of ki, searing a slug to green goo-and he doubled over gasping, clutching his head, every muscle drawn taught with pain.

I watched until I saw that he was coming out of it, that the pain was not going to suffocate him as it had at Bardock's house, then I backed away.

He's found another subliminal mine, and this one could end up being indirectly fatal. He can't kill. He can't even kill a garden slug without debilitating pain.

I've told one person. Scopa. He says he has some ideas that will help, things the psychiatric ward has used to help people overcome Mousrom's mental trip wires.

Vegita came back in after he recovered last night and I didn't mention it. If he wanted me to know, he'd have told me. In a perfect galaxy, it wouldn't be a bad thing if Vegita never killed another living thing again as long as he lived. But before this is all over, he and Jeiyce will fight head to head. I don't know when or how, but somehow, I know it will happen. And if Vegita is as he is now, Jeiyce will kill him. If Vegita's 'disability' becomes known here on Vegita-sei...it would be bad. Very bad.

The first of the shield production plants went online today. I wish I could say everything's just peachy, but there was a major setback last night.

I was putting the last touches on a new security system for the shield generators, an improvement on the one I had shown the King a week or two ago. Vegita-ou took one glance at my security ID authentication of software, that opens a shield 'door' for a ship based with user verification based on personal ki signature, and grinned at me. Honestly grinned.

"Good girl!" he said, and sanctioned it immediately. I think that's about the best praise I'm ever going to get out of Vegita's father.

I had finally gotten Rom-kun to sleep before midnight, a major achievement these days. Neither Vegita nor I nor Bardock nor Scopa are getting much sleep. So, Rom-kun has taken that as license to fight sleep every night. I think he's afraid he'll miss something. I was so sleepy, I think I had actually fallen asleep for a minute or two, face down on my blue prints.

"Woman!" Vegita's voice snapped me awake, and I had this weird out of sync with time moment where I thought for a second or two he had come home expecting to be met at the door with a smile and sex on request and now he was going to hurt me very badly for having slacked off. I shook myself and got up, feeling angry at having been jarred awake and angry that he might have woken Rom-kun and even angrier that he'd yelled for me through the house. He never raised his voice now. I stamped into the hearthroom, and strode up to him, hands on hips. He raised up from whatever production logistics snarl he and Turna were trying to sort out over the dining table, and one corner of his mouth curled up at the sight of me. I felt my eyes narrowing.

"How may I serve you, Ouji-sama?" I asked in a less than accommodating tone. His grin widened and that only made me angrier. Then he reached up and wiped the side of my nose gently, his fingers coming away black with ink. I'd gotten ink all over my face when I fell asleep over my plans. So much for looking anything but silly. He drew a few sweaty tendrils out of my eyes, his face softening...and I felt all my anger slip away. Behind us, Turna was looking pointedly down at the plans on the table.

He seemed to suppress a sigh, and dropped his hand. "The plants use a full compliment of your servo mechanoids for production," he said. "The facilities are guarded by Saiyan warriors with above average technical expertise. The planet-based hubs of the shields will need heavy guard as well. What we need is better security and faster production."

I thought for a second or two. "Two things," I said. "I can go around to each of the plants and tweak the bots one at a time, for higher speed. It'll burn their processors out quickly, but we'll only need them for a few months anyway. Also...

Yaro snarled hatefully from beneath the table. I looked down and saw both dogs were cringing under the dining table, growling low in their throats, focused on the open door that was letting cool night air into the sweltering house. Then, Vegita and Turna begin to growl as well, making almost the same canine sound of threat, and I saw that something was blocking the breeze in the doorway. Mousrom.

"If you ever breed these animals, Ouji-sama," Turna muttered. "I would gladly have one for my own household. An animal that can scent an enemy's presence quicker than we can is a valuable creature."

"My humblest apologies for disturbing you at such a late hour, my Prince," the Inquisitor said. "But there is an urgent matter that needs addressing." His gaze crawled over me, looking me up and down, making me feel like I'd just been felt up from across the room.

"Mousrom," Vegita snarled softly. "If you so much as glance in my woman's direction again, I will gut you where you stand."

Mousrom started to say something smart, but judged the look in Vegita's eyes and thought better of it. Too bad. He bowed in apology and looked away from me.

"What is your errand!" Vegita snapped.

The Inquisitor's thick jowls pursed in an oily smile and he shifted a stack of documents in one hand. "I have a list of names of suspected enemies of the Empire, all of whom have been put to question, Ouji-sama. Vipers in my own bosom, in fact. They are all former medics from Med Center whom I took to aid in extending the life expectancy of the more valuable suspects under my attentions."

My chest had seized up while he spoke and I had to fight to keep my legs steady. Oh gods, Nachti and Twili, Nikeet, Sauwa, Torq...The names and faces of everyone Mousrom had taken, of everyone we had blithely ushered onto his torture table by asking for their help. Vegita snatched the list from his hands. I looked down at the list and we read it together. Nachti's name wasn't on it. But...but Torq, Nikeet and Sauwa... I was fighting not to collapse.

. "I have the name of the man to whom they report, their cell leader," Mousrom went on. "But he is a free employee of Med Center, and thus, under your personal protection. In fact, I believe he was at one time a slave in your own household. In anycase, I need your permission to take him."

And of course, he meant Scopa. My mouth was dry.

"They were not Red Network," Vegita said with deadly gentleness. "Scopa's folk were monitoring your actions at my command. I must be sure of all my servants, Minister."

Mousrom stared at him as though Vegita had just broken into a tap dance number. "Surely you do not doubt my loyalty to Vegita-sei," he spluttered.

This was it, I thought. This was going to do for Vegita what slugslaying in the garden every night had not-it was going to break Jeicye's mental land mine against killing. Mousrom was about to die. "You always swear your loyalty to Vegita-sei," Vegita said, moving slowly toward the fat man like a big cat about to tear open an antelope. "But never to the throne. A prince has the luxury of trusting no one, Mousrom."

Mousrom's fat face was blood red with rage.

"You will return my servants to me..." Vegita said softly. "Are they are still alive?"

"They live," Mousrom's sneered, eyeing his Prince with a calculating look that sent a shaft of fear shooting through me. He had to know Vegita was going to kill him for this. It was as though he was baiting him to do it. "After a fashion. Though I fear they may never be quite right again. The broken never are. But...you know that, do you not, Ouji-sama?"

Vegita slammed him down on the stone tiles of the floor, kneeling over him, snarling. "You must take as much pleasure in receiving pain as in inflicting it to constantly tax me so, Mousrom!"

"I spoke the plainest truth!" Mousrom spat into his face. "I shall do it again. You were a thoughtless, spoiled young fool before the Red Prince took you into his care. A danger and a liability to the throne and the Empire. Now, you are a weak, mentally unstable, soft-"

Vegita cursed and raised his fist, an instant from hurling a ki blast through Mousrom's heart. And then...then he collapsed screaming, wailing his throat raw. His breath began seizing up in his chest, his body balled up in a posture I remembered from his first days at Bardock's. The geas had held...just as Mousrom had known it would.

"Turna-san!" I cried, ignoring Mousrom. Vegita wasn't getting any air.

"Turn him over for me. I'm not strong enough."

"My Prince!" Turna gripped him and rolled him onto his back.

"We need a trank," I said urgently. Oh gods, where had I put my med satchel? Had I even brought it home today?! "He's not breathing!"

"I thought as much," Mousrom was chuckling. "Subliminal mines! He cannot kill. Gods, what a devilishly cruel and clever thing to do to a Saiyan warrior! You will have to knock him out, my girl. I imagine he'll asphyxiate if you don't."

I glanced up and Turna and nodded. Turna hit him once, a quick, painless blow to the side of his head, and Vegita sagged, unconscious. Unconscious, but breathing.

I glanced up at the fat bastard standing over Vegita's prone body, a nasty, triumphant smile smeared across his face. "Turna," I said coldly. "He'll tell everyone if he leaves this house alive."

Turna stood, his ki swirling upward like a solid wall of power. He raised his hand open palm to Mousrom, his hard, plain face full of cold satisfaction at what he was about to do.

"Where is your Lady, Lord Turna?" Mousrom smirked.

Turna paused, his brows drawing down. "What do you mean?"

"Your villa on the Capital's northern edge is surrounded by many warriors," Mousrom said coldly. "She is strong, but not strong enough to best a hundred men."

"You back-stabbing coward," Turna said softly. But he dropped his hand. We stood together numbly and watched Mousrom leave. There was nothing else to do. We could have called his bluff, but if Articha didn't managed to fight her way out of the ambush, Turna would die with her. And then it would be my word against Mousrom's that their deaths were not the work of Network terrorists. I was sure the King would believe me, perhaps even have Mousrom's head for it, but Articha and Turna would be just as dead.

The King arrived less than an hour later. His face was like a block of anguished stone as he entered our bedroom unannounced. Turna had carried Vegita to the bed and left like a bullet to see with his own eyes that his mate was unharmed. I had sat down on the bed beside Vegita, stroking his face and forehead after I rocked Rom-kun back to sleep. Vegita's screams didn't terrify him, but they sent him into a crying jag that was hard to stop. He wasn't scared of Vegita, he was scared for him. He kept saying, "Poor Edeeta!" as he sobbed.

"That was quick," I said. I didn't intend my voice to be so full of quiet rage.

"Why did you let him leave alive?" He asked me angrily. I told him about how Mousrom had set Turna and Articha up and he spat in disgust. "He is a clever beast, is he not?" His mouth curled at one end. "And you would have slain him if you could have."

"In a heartbeat, Sire," I said adamantly. Vegita moaned and stirred. I gazed up and the King, meeting his eyes. "I know what you're about to do. Tell me, please, Ou-sama...if Scopa and I can break the conditioning, will you take him back?"

The King of Vegita-sei nodded grimly. "In a heartbeat, girl."

Vegita woke then, and the King ordered me out while he disowned his son.

I waited until Vegita-ou left, rummaging through a few capsules in my workroom for one of the psych rehab tools Scopa given me. He was working on something much more elaborate, but this one little vid-pic would be a good start. Then I went back into the bedroom and sat beside him again on the bed, staring down into those dark, gentle eyes, feeling all the sorrow in the world close in on me at the sight, wordless but so eloquent, of how deeply and completely he loved me. To see that look on a man's face, to feel my own heart respond in kind at the sight of his face, should have filled me with nothing but joy. _All that might have been good is poisoned, girl,_ the King had said. I wanted to lay down and cry for a year for the truth in that one statement.

"You cannot be grieving for me," he whispered.

"I'm not," I said. "You aren't dead."

"No," he replied dully. "I am worse than dead."

"No," I said coolly. "You are feeling sorry for yourself."

If I'd slapped his face he wouldn't have been more stunned. But now he was thinking of something other than the fact that he'd just been disinherited by the father he loved. I had to get him moving again, make him start working the problem. He was strong. He'd get right back up again if I prodded him.

"You don't realize it," I went on. "But you love your world and your people more than you'll ever love me or your father. You started to realize that on the day Arbatsu fell, and since you came back, you've used every means at your disposal-not just your fighting strength- to save them. Even if your people are fickle, bone-headed fools who can't see that there's more to being a ruler than brute strength and killing, do you want to see Vegita-sei fall? Do you want to see your people wiped out and this beautiful world burned?"

"No!" He said harshly. "I do not want that! I will not allow it!"

"Then do your duty by them as their Prince," I said. "Get up tomorrow as though nothing were wrong. Keep working on the rad shield project, keep training with Rikkuum and Bardock's people, keep looking for Jeiyce's base, and keep trying to break the conditioning triggers he left in your head. Scopa and I have treated hundreds of Mousrom's victims, people he released after he broke them and found they knew nothing. I can tell you where to start." I shoved the vidpic into his hand. "It's Jeiyce of Maiyosh's image, taken at his wedding on Corsaris eight years ago." He looked down at the pic as though I just put a snake in his hand. Gods, they had done a really thorough job on him if he was having trouble just holding a vidpic of Jeiyce. I had known how bad it was, I think. I had known it from the way he always stuttered over Jeiyce's name. That's deep, deep fear/submission conditioning, and it's nearly impossible to overcome. "It's the only picture I could find of him," I went on. "The prime factor in breaking through any wall of conditioning is to shatter the personal control of the one who did this to you. We can start slow. By looking at his picture. Ready?"

He nodded grimly. I clicked the vidpic to on and he stared at it for about half a second before he just crumbled, wrenching away and balling up into a knot with a moan of horror that sounded so like the child he had been when he first woke at Bard's that my heart contracted. "Try again," I said softly. He set his jaw, furious at himself and what he must surely see as his own weakness, and turned back, forcing himself to look again.. His hands flexed on the device, smashing it to bits, as he gasped for air as though he had just fought a battle to the limit of his strength.

"Ten seconds," I said gently. It was good; much better than I had expected. I lay his head in my lap, feeling him still shaking like a leaf in my arms. "That's a very good start. And squashing his picture is an even better sign. Say his name."

He looked up at me in a kind of helpless horror. "Bulma..." The very thought that Jeiyce had broken him so badly he couldn't even say the man's name must be spirit-breaking in and of itself.

"Say his name," I said again firmly. "Don't let him keep that power over you. Take it back, Vegita. Who is your enemy?"

I had brought the anger out, the rage at what had been done to him, at how he had been humbled, just as I'd meant to. "Jeiyce!" He spat. "Jeiyce of Maiyosh! The Red Prince! The-" He stopped, staring at me in wonder, giving me the credit for what he had just done himself. Gods, I hadn't hoped that he could have made any progress at all so quickly. He was giving me that look again, unveiled, bare of the inexpressive Saiyan mask he had learned to wear in company. It was his whole heart laid out naked and open at my feet, just as it had been on that green moor near Bardock's house. It was the face of the man I loved. I kissed him, taking a slow, deep taste, and slipped my hand under his backside, stroking his tail. He growled softly, pulling me down on top of him, his mouth trailing heat down my throat. "What was that for?" He asked hoarsely.

"Positive reinforcement," I said with a mischievous smile. "You have to do this as often as you can. Look at him, say his name again and again. And keep trying to kill the leaf slugs in my garden."

"You knew," he whispered, his entire body vibrating under my touch.

"I knew," I said softly. "One step at a time, Vegita." He smiled up at me, sweet and kind, and I smiled back, squeezing his tail a little tighter until he purred like a cat.

"Bulma..." He said softly, his voice deepening with a thread of real desire. "Gods, I want you..."

"I'm right here," I said faintly. He made a harsh noise of joy at my words of permission, his mouth moving over my breasts, his hands pushing up through my blouse and under my skirt, tracing a sear of heat over each familiar curve of my body, and I pulled him to me, straddling his lap, my mouth everywhere. Thought and fear were gone, there was nothing left but the too-long denied heat tearing through us. One hand cupped my breast, and the other was hitching up the hem of my skirt. When his hand found its way between my legs I arched my back, gasping for breath, on the teetering edge of orgasm already. But his other hand, the hand that was caressing my breast through the sheer cloth of my blouse with maddening slowness, clenched at the scent of how close I was to release, clenched with unintentional bruising force and he growled deep and soft in the back of his throat. My eyes shot open, meeting his, and saw the raw need there, the thick heat of animal desire. The burning weight of his stare made something inside me cower like a whipped animal, without banking my desire. It was _him._ The man who had touched me in my garden Turrasht, and made me want him even while I was cursing him.

He saw it. He froze, shuddering, his eyes once more those of the new Vegita, my Vegita_. There is too much blood debt between the two of you,_ the King had said. _All that might have been good is poisoned._ "Don't...please don't stop," I sobbed, knowing he couldn't go on, knowing I couldn't.

"I cannot," he said unsteadily. I saw all my despair reflected back at me in his eyes. "In Bardock's house, I told you that I had looked in your eyes and seen that you wanted me, but that wanting gave you grief. I cannot hold you with that look in your eyes...even if it means never having you again."

"It wasn't supposed to be this way." I whispered, letting him pull me back into his arms, laying my head on his chest. His hand stroked my face, brushing away tears I hadn't even been aware of shedding. "We were supposed to meet another way, begin another way. Now, everything is twisted...and...and it's all ruined!"

He turned on his side, peering into my face, shaking his head in denial. "Why do you stay, Bulma? Why do you help me? Why are you not working with the Red Network to destroy the Empire?"

I told him the truth, lying awake all night in his arms, of why I had cheered for the rebels at first, of why I now believed they had become what they beheld...become worse monsters than the Saiyans who had enslaved them.

"Jeiyce's hands are filthy with innocent blood," I said coldly. "And the worst thing about him is that he knows better. He wasn't raised to think people of other races aren't really people. He wasn't taught that fighting and killing are the best entertainment this side of heaven. Corsaris was a parliamentary monarchy, and his foster father raised him to respect life and freedom and-and now, he's worse than what he believes your father to be, because nothing, no rule of honor or morality, no horror of atrocity, is beyond him." I paused, burning with rage at them, at all of them, Saiyan and Maiyosh-jin alike, for all the butchered innocents caught in the crossfire of their monstrous war. "As bad as I think the Empire is, the galaxy-wide chaos and in-fighting that would follow Vegita-sei's fall would kill more people than this war has. The men who began the rebellion have lost their way. They've become the thing they hated, without the stay of Saiyan honor to stop them from becoming monsters as lawless and ruthless as Bardock's histories depicted the Tsiru-jin Empire. And you...You've changed as much as Jeiyce since this war began. If Jeiyce and his men have become evil, you're becoming..."

"Good?" He tried to pawn it off as a half-joking question, but he studied me closely, waiting for my answer.

"No," I said. "Not yet...but you're heading there." I kissed him. "Vegita-sei's been my home for eight years now. It's like you. Beautiful and horrible in its great goods and great evils. I love it as much as I hate it...so, I'll fight to save it."

It's been almost a month since I spoke. Mousrom sent all of the "Blue Network" spies who survived him back to Med Center. Scopa and I began treating them ourselves, with a silent, shaking Hiru at our side. We're taking care of them as best we can. I think Twili and Nekeet may make a complete recovery. The others are sunk in…in this deep motionless fear of movement, of noise, of everything outside the confines of their recovery suites. Scopa broke down when he learned what had happened. He blamed himself, of course, for getting them involved. But the day after Mousrom's people arrived with the broken shells of the doctors and medics who had been our friends, Hiru received word from Nachti. She said she wasn't going to stop, and Zarbon had damn well better get his ass back to Kharda sometime next week because word around the campfire in Kharda City's slave quarter was that Mousrom was building a special, strong, ki-suppressing compound based on captured Red Demon ki-killers for the express purpose of holding and interrogating Saiyan 'subversives'. Which is another word for anyone of his own race who pisses him off.

So, we can't stop. Scopa is a little better, now, recognizing the reality of what we are all involved in and that it has to be done. And mostly, that Mousrom is to blame, not us. Hiru is still existing in a terrible limbo of perpetual fear for Nachti's life, but Zarbon is the one who nearly lost it over this. I overheard him and Bardock talking the morning after Mousrom returned our people to Med Center, saying that he could dance with death a dozen time before breakfast every day of his life, but Scopa being involved in all of this may just give him a nervous breakdown. Scopa loves Zarbon, a deep, steady, sweet love that most people dream about when they think of being loved. But…Scopa is the axis of Zarbon's entire existence. He would find a way to die very quickly is something happened to Scopa, and the thought of how very close his lover came to being taken by Mousrom sent Zarbon into a rage at me for 'dragging Scopa into this shitstorm'. Zarbon's apologized for it since, and he and I are okay now, but I know he is living in the same kind of hell Hiru's in, in constant fear for the ones they love.

Vegita's been killing himself to get Vegita-sei's shield in place before Moontime.

The word is that the Red Demons are going to do something nasty during the Season of the Moon. Mousrom's spies and informants are all whispering that something big is on the wind, but no one seems to know what it is. Zarbon says something is about to go down, but that the bigger it is, the less likely is it that Jeiyce will tell any of the onworld operatives before he sends them the command to act. Bardock, Nail, Scopa, and Hiru are all starting to look a little worn around the edges as well. Come to think of it, I'm not feeling so well rested myself. Just a few more hurdles and I can rest. We all can rest. Everyone in the whole damn galaxy can take a breather, because the war will be on permanent hold.

I could give you a comprehensive list of everything we've all been up to, but it would take a very long time. The plants and the shield generator for Vegita-sei's own shield are the first priority. We go to the plants and the generator sight near the Capital's space port every day, and when we're not there, we're at the plants, keeping them cranking out shield for every damn planet in the Empire. After hours, Bardock and Vegita are digging through Tsiru-jin and Maiyosh-jin financial ledgers, trying to find a clue to where Jeiyce might be hiding his main base.

Vegita's people are proving true to form, shunning him for the sin of not having killed himself in shame after his father disowned him, but more for the sin of being mortal flesh and blood. For having been captured, tortured and broken to the point that he could have had mental block against killing erected in his mind. He's doing a good job of blowing it off, but it eats at him, and he will sometimes drive his body to the point of collapse when he trains at the end of the day, pouring all his rage and frustration into those sessions before he comes to bed and collapses beside me. There's no real time to train, but he says it's a necessity. He's trying to put a leash of control around his power. It's grown so great since his body fully recovered from Avaris that he almost can't control it. He said it's like…like holding the tail of a tornado. He's afraid it will spin out of control and kill him and everyone around him if he doesn't get a better handle on it.

Last night, I knew something suspicious was going on in the garden. When I came out to take Rom-kun to bed, I found a fried rose bush, and two very guilty looking Saiyans. I asked Rom-kun what was up as I put him to bed, but he bit his lip and said to ask Edeeta.

"I was showing him how to control his ki," Vegita told me as we both lay exhausted in our bed.

I tensed and turned in his arms, "Is it time for that?" I asked. I felt a horrible sadness, grief for the loss of my son's babyhood.

Vegita frowned uncomfortably. "It should be too early, but it is not. But he is not…not like other children." I didn't know what to make of that. "Bardock has told me what you believe to be true of the boy. He thought it was madness at first. He believes you now."

"What changed his mind?" I asked softly.

"Things the boy has said," Vegita said. He seemed to not want to talk about or think about this subject, but he was forcing himself to, as though he felt he had no choice. "The boy said something in my hearing, repeating to Bardock something his father said to Kakarott just before he killed the boy on Chikyuu."

A thrill of nervous fear went through me. "Romayn said something tonight," Vegita went on. "I asked him if he did not remember how to call his fighting power from…before. He told me the 'Ojjiisan' took his knowledge of how to harness his own ki away because it is 'bad for babies'."

My mouth was dry. "My…gods, Vegita."

"I do not think the memory of who he was is constant, if that is truly what it is," Vegita went on. "Sometimes he seems to be nothing more than a child, but other times…"

"I know," I said. "Sometimes he can barely put a whole sentence together, and then he'll be carrying on a complex conversation the next minute." I studied him closely. "Do you believe it?"

"I do not know," he said after a long moment of silence. "But whatever his nature or destiny, his ki is straining to burst free. When Mousrom's man Oriff broke your wrist, Romayn might have hurt you with the amount of power he was releasing in his fear for you. He must learn to control it or he will be a danger to you."

"Okay." I sighed so heavily he wrapped his arm a little more securely around me. "Bardock will take you to the generator site at dawn tomorrow. Take Romayn with you."

I shifted to look him in the eye, suddenly suspicious. "What's going on?"

"Mousrom has gained my father's leave to take Med Center," he said tonelessly. There was no inflection whatsoever in his voice, yet it carried so much anger for his father. "Scopa came tonight and told me. Bardock's folk and Scopa's informants in Kharda learned today that the Inquisition will be moving into Med Center tomorrow morning." Vegita smiled grimly. "I will welcome Mousrom when he arrives…but I wish you to be elsewhere until I remove them."

Vegita met Mousrom's people at the break of day and pounded them. All one hundred twenty-three of them. Then, according to Scopa, he gave Mousrom the beating of his life. I wonder how the son of a bitch took to being the recipient of pain for a change? Scopa said that when it was over Vegita looked...disgusted. And a little sad. He didn't see all the medical staff peeking out on him, or hear the cheer that rose inside Med Center when he tossed Mousrom away. Hiru is still convinced that Vegita is mad, that the Maiyosh-jin broke his mind and now I control the Prince. Which, in Hiru's mind, is just what Vegita deserves. And...I think most of Med Center is of the same opinion.

But sane or mad, they prefer this Vegita.

.

A week ago, Turna and Articha petitioned the throne formally for leave to distribute the shields among the colonies personally. We switched on the generator for Vegita-sei's shield yesterday morning. The shield's up, it's running, it's working like a fucking dream. I felt like dancing in circles when it went online. The soldiers we trained are the only fallible component, running space traffic control, checking that the ki-signature authentication is verified, okaying each shield window for ships coming and going.

I threw a party last night.

Articha and Turna were off with the first shipment of shields to core Imperial worlds, but everyone else was present. It was good. Everyone was so tired, myself included, and needed to blow off a little steam. Bardock was very drunk. I know, because he only starts singing when he's completely shit-faced. That's kind of sad since he had such a beautiful tenor. Zarbon and Hiru were conspicuously absent. Hiru because it was Vegita's household. I don't think Zarbon would have come either-he keeps in the background whenever Vegita's around, to the point that I doubt Vegita would recognize his face if I introduced them. But Zarbon wasn't around. He took off unexpectedly in the morning. Batha and Caddi are gone from their posts. Just gone. It put a damper on the feeling of euphoric relief, because the most likely explanation is that they've been taken or killed. And gods…I hope it's the latter. For their sakes. He's gone to the port city he placed them in to see what he can find out.

Everyone tapered away several hours past midnight, Scopa and Bardock hanging on each other's shoulders, still singing happily. The last thing I heard Scopa say as they left was a laughing warning about flying drunk. I don't know if he meant Bardock or himself. I was worrying vaguely that Scopa would try to take his flyer back to Med Center in his condition. Then I started to sort of tip backwards. Heh. My balance centers were a little off. Vegita was there, catching me. Rom-kun was slung over his shoulder like a little sack of flour, sleeping sound as a rock.

"You are very drunk, woman," he said, turning me gently, smiling slightly.

I sort of fell into him and I felt him draw his face through my hair, taking a deep savoring breath.

I smiled against his chest, sliding both arms around him in a warm comfortable hug. "I'm…very happy," I said.

"That is good," he said softly.

He carried me to bed, laying Rom-kun between us. We talked about what we need to do next, about all the work that is still to be done. I kept repeating my mantra, the thing that had set off such a full, happy glow inside me. No one else has to die.

"It is not over until Jeiyce is slain," he murmured against my hair, one hand unconsciously threaded through Rom-kun's spiky little mane. I don't think he was even aware of doing it. "We have a little less than nine weeks until Moontime. I would rest easier if he were run to ground before then."

"This will be my first Moon," I said. I hadn't been to Med Center in three of four days, but Scopa said the mad rush had begun. Saiyans were lined up a hundred deep for their neuro-suppressant, so they could get it on under the moon without moonbonding. That reminded me of the story Articha had told me before she left with Turna to deliver the shields. "Have you ever heard how Articha and Turna got together?"

"Only that they are bonded by the moon," he said.

I cocked an eye at him curiously. "Have you ever been with a woman under the moon?"

He smirked. "I always preferred to fight." Heh-ask a silly question. "This will be my first moon as a man grown. I was only seventeen last time. Tell me Turna and Articha's tale."

"He's back country nobility," I said. "And only moderately high powered. She was super Elite and heir to an ancient, powerful barony. But she told me they wanted each other from the first moment they met. The problem was, if he initiated a courtship spar, her honor would have demanded that she couldn't throw the fight. And she's about twice as strong as him, and would have just pounded him flat. So, they refused their neuro-suppressants at Moontime and they went to the bad lands in the north where no one lives-and bonded under the full moon." I sighed, thinking how she had described it, as something like melting into each other's skins, of seeing the whole of your mate's soul. And leaving a part of your own soul in his, while he did the same.

"It is not the sweet encounter you imagine," he chuckled. "Moonbonding is very, very violent. The two 'lovers' nearly tear each other to pieces as they couple."

"But Articha said it's as though he were inside her mind and soul," I said. "The other half of her heart."

Vegita snorted. "And if one of them is slain, the other will pine and die within a day-if the shock of the loss itself does not stop their heart. It is not 'romantic' to draw your partner down into death with you. If I should die, I want you to live long and happily, woman! Not die with me as Turna would have died had Articha been killed by the Maiyosh-jin."

I smiled and held him a little closer.

This morning I came out of the bathing room to hear Vegita laughing. He had gone out into the garden to find Scopa passed out in the petunias.

"Ouji-sama," Scopa began, sitting up unsteadily. "I…I…"

"You, Doctor," Vegita said sternly. "Are as poor at holding your drink as you are at catching an overhand pass of Rom-ball." Scopa's mouth hung open. 'Rom-ball' had been their name for the game they played at Bardock's house, a silly game of toss, with Rom-kun as the ball. Then Vegita's mouth twitched just the tiniest bit…and he held out his hand, pulling Scopa to his feet. "Come, Scopa. There is still much for all of us to do before the moon arrives."

That's the first time I've heard him speak to Scopa as he did at Bardock's house. Like a friend. A good, trusted friend. I wish every day could be as good as yesterday.

It was a perfect day.

They came for us at half past noon.

Mousrom's men dropping into Med Center through the skylights while Rom-kun and I were having lunch with Scopa in the garden conservatory. It only just now occurred to me that someone inside Med Center must have told them about our new habit of eating lunch there. It was so fast we didn't have time to scream or even really know what was happening before one of them struck me, leaving me woozy and half conscious. Then, we were up through the skylights and away, streaking across the Capital, touching down somewhere very close to the Palace. They carried us inside, wherever we were, and I saw the man striding beside the man carrying me was holding Rom-kun. My baby was completely limp, tucked under his arm almost negligently. I didn't scream. I don't know how I kept from screaming, but I knew they would have just left Rom-kun lying in the gardens if he were dead. I couldn't see Scopa, but I could hear him, struggling in the grip of the soldier behind us.

They wound through a maze of white, sterile corridors, then through a pale, unadorned door, and into a white room that looked like an operating room. But it wasn't. Oh gods, I wasn't scared, not even when I saw Mousrom waiting for us in that room, smiling like an evil, round-faced child on his birthday. I was truly, mortally terrified for Rom-kun and Scopa, but I didn't think even Mousrom was so suicidally stupid as to hurt me.

"Welcome!" Mousrom said brightly.

"You have been set up, my Lord Inquisitor," Scopa said hoarsely. He sounded like his mouth was dry with fear, but none of it showed on his face.

"I have?" Mousrom's eyes widened in mock surprise. "Enlighten me, Doctor."

"I spoke to the King two days ago," Scopa said. "I told him his son is making good progress in overcoming the geas the Red Prince set in his mind that prevents him from killing any living thing. Vegita-ou asked me what set of circumstances might possibly help the Prince overcome the mental conditioning now-this minute. I told him that some kind of shock, where fear and rage overrode the geas might break the block in his mind. I gave him the example of the Prince finding his father slain by Red Demon assassins, and the assassin still standing by, red-handed. The shock, the rage, the grief, would break the geas, and Vegita-ouji would kill the assassin. The King is solving two vexing problems in a very utilitarian fashion, my Lord Mousrom. He is using you to put Bulma and the child in danger. In an hour, perhaps two, he will turn his son loose upon you. Vegita-ouji will break the block against killing. He will kill you, my Lord. And in fell swoop, the King will have a fully recovered son, and rid himself of you."

Mousrom looked completely nonplused for a second or two, and I must have gaped. That mother-fucking, cold-blooded old bastard! That was exactly what Vegita-ou was doing! Then, Mousrom threw back his head and laughed.

"I like you, my boy!" He said, still chuckling. "It would be a good theory, but there's more to the tale than you know. This morning, I gave the King a full report of my interrogation of two Red Network spies taken in the southern port site of Biyan. Imagine my delight when I learned they were both former domestic slaves in the household of the Saiyan no Ouji. The woman Caddi died under questioning without speaking a word. Her sister, Batha, broke at the end and gave us a name. Zarbon of Rashia-sei."

Scopa made a low noise of horror. "Do you have him in custody?" Scopa whispered.

"Sadly no," Mousrom replied, and Scopa's knees would have buckled with relief is the soldier restraining him hadn't been there to prop him up. "He is not to be found where he should be. But his movements, his past assignments, and the naturally high fighting power of his race all lead me to believe he may be the Network cell leader for all of Vegita-sei. I also believe, based on information I have pieced together in the last weeks, that he is Jeiyce's one direct link to the Mastertech himself…" His eyes gleamed, pleased and greedy, as they fell on me. "Or herself. Such lovely machines you've built for your Prince, Bulma of Chikyuu. And the way you deciphered the miniaturization science when no one else could make heads or tails of it. Almost as though you already knew the technology intimately." He watched us both process that, his eyes drinking in our growing fear.

He'd have never understood that our fears, mine and Scopa's, were mostly for each other, for Rom-kun, for Zarbon. Oh gods, did he even know they were looking for him, that his cover was blown to hell? Would he just waltz into Med Center sometime this afternoon, unaware of his danger, and be taken by Mousrom's men?

"So!" Said Mousrom with that hateful cheerfulness. "Who was and still is closest to Zarbon? Who dwelt in the same household with him and the Ansousei-jin women? That would be the two of you. Vegita-ou looked at my report this morning, listened to my theories, and signed the orders for your arrests himself. The Prince will not find you until I have both of your confessions. Then, the King will give his wayward, soft-minded son the recordings of your eloquetions and I have a feeling-" His smile widened. "-That the double blow of your betrayal and death will be the end of him." He raised him beefy hands and cracked his knuckles. "Shall we begin? Let us start by finding out all that juicy Network gossip your lover must have whispered to you, Doctor."

I began to scream and kick, not noticing that Scopa was just standing there, strangely calm, as the guards dragged me out of that room with its medical pallet and restraining straps and instruments that had nothing to do with medicine. They carried me down the hall and tossed me in a holding cell, and I shrieked even louder when I realized they were taking Rom-kun away with them. I sat and rocked and cried, trying not to know what must be happening to Scopa, trying not to see it in my mind. I don't know how long the guards left me alone, but they came back after a short while, grinning at me as they opened the cell door and stepped in.

"Where is my baby?" I asked in a choking voice that sounded like an old woman's.

"If you behave and do as we say," one of them told me, "We won't cut off his little fingers and toes."

I did everything they asked me to. It wasn't as bad as my first year in Vegita's household-they didn't make me come the way the Evil Prince did when I finally gave in to him. And they knew it would mean their lives if they hurt me. But it was bad. It was bad.

I sort of faded out at some point. I came back to lucidity as I was being dragged back down the hall to the white room. Mousrom asked me if I enjoyed spending time with his guards. Scopa was beside him, strapped down on the medical pallet. There was no blood. They had used acupuncture needles wired to neural pain inducers. One of them held me beside the bed, and they made me watch as Mousrom went back to work on Scopa, as Mousrom made him scream. My poor, good, sweet friend, who never hurt anyone in his life…

I started to fall apart after less than two minutes. "Stop it!" I was crying. "Stop! I'll say whatever you want me to say! Please, please, please stop hurting him!"

Mousrom turned to me, his eyes gleaming with triumph, and Scopa…Scopa said one word, his voice raw and broken with screaming. "Rom-kun…"

I closed my mouth, and I saw in Mousrom's hateful, cheated glare that he knew I wouldn't give him anything now. If I talked, what would happen to Rom-kun? The only hope we had at all, the only hope for my baby, was for Scopa and I to hold out until Vegita figured out where we were. By now, he would surely know we were missing. And who must have taken us.

Mousrom's gaze shifted from Scopa to me, then back again. "Damn," he said mildly. He stared down at Scopa in grudging admiration. "You're more of a man that I gave you credit for being, boy. Let the woman loose a moment, soldier." The guard restraining me let go and I leaned over Scopa and began pulling the pins out of the pressure points on his body, sobbing hysterically, saying his name over and over, not wondering why they had released me or why they were just standing there letting me unhook Scopa from their torture gadgets. I leaned down and kissed his face.

"Scopa…" I said. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry! I love you…"

His face was dead pale, his mop of tangled dark curls soaked through with his own sweat, but somehow, he managed to smile at me. "I Silenced you because I was afraid and weak," he whispered. "I wasn't weak this time, Bulma…I wasn't weak."

Mousrom had been standing at the head of the bed. He reached down and took Scopa's head in both hands, and broke his neck.

I stared down at Scopa's face, not moving. It took a moment or to before I realized what I had just seen. Then I started shrieking, "No!" again and again. Mousrom rolled Scopa's…Scopa's body off the pallet and he hit the floor with all the force of dead weight. I knelt down, tried to pick him back up, tried to make him wake up. But Mousrom hauled me up by the armpits and sat me down hard on the med pallet bed. He slapped me hard enough to make my ears ring, then put his hands on either side of my face, forcing me to look at him.

"Think of Bardock's little son and calm yourself, girl," he told me coldly.

I went still, my head swimming with horror and denial and too much grief to process, caught in the bright, evil glitter on his eyes. He stroked my face and I moaned and tried to cringe away.

"Now," he said in an even steady voice as though he were speaking to a small child. "There is only one rule in this room. I pride myself on being a shrewd judge of how any given person will react to stress and trauma. You, my girl, will be tempted to opt out of the session before it is complete. My rule for you is this: Do not withdraw into yourself and leave me with nothing but a breathing doll. If you do, I will bring your little 'Rom-kun' to this room and I will cut him into pieces from the toes up. Do you understand me?"

I nodded.

They tried the acupuncture pain inducers first. It hurt like hell and I screamed like a banshee, but something about the way I responded seemed to bother Mousrom. I kept me eyes fixed on his, kept constant eye contact, so he wouldn't think I'd faded out on me. So he wouldn't hurt Rom-kun. He seemed to like this. Every now and then he would reach out and touch my face or my hand. And I began to realize that this was sex for him. I think that's when the rage hit me, finally, for all that he had done. For Scopa, for me, for too many people to count. The hate dragon stirred, shifting in her coils, waking and howling inside her prison to be free. And I began to howl with her. I began cursing through the screams, struggling in the restraint straps. When Mousrom touched my hair, I bit his finger to the bone.

"We will try something a tad less refined now," Mousrom told me as they began to pull the electrode pins out.

He tore out my fingernails, one at a time, one little piece at a time. It hurt. I screamed. I also kicked and spat in his face and cursed him with every foul piece of profanity I'd learned from Bardock and his squad over the last nine years.

He stopped after both fingers were a bloody, nailess mess, studying me in an assessing way that suddenly made me afraid again.

He grunted and frowned. "I could break you. But it would take more time than we have. I am fighting the hour hand in this matter. Your threshold of pain of far too high for such a pretty girl, my dear. I should have remembered that were a pleasure slave. You would not have survived a year in the Prince's household if you were not far tougher than you appear. So then...we will try a different approach." He backed away from me and said something to one of the guards. The soldier left and returned a few tense moments later, carrying a very awake Rom-kun.  
"Momma," he began. "These men are mean. They-"  
I don't know which Rom-kun saw first, my hands or Scopa lying cold and dead on the floor, his eyes wide and staring. The room began to shake. It was like standing on a railroad track as the sound and vibration of the oncoming train bears down on you.  
"MommaMommaMomma!" Rom-kun shrieked.  
And the room exploded around us.  
I remember being pinned under something, a section of roof. It came down on us in one piece, boxing us in a little hole, and probably saved our lives as the entire complex crashed down on us. I remember feeling Rom-kun's solid weight in my arms, not questioning how he had come to be there, and the sound of his voice sobbing, "Momma...poor Momma..."  
Something tore away the slab of stone than was balanced over our heads, and a snowfall of mortar dust poured over us. Hands, warm and callused and gentle, lifted us up, and then I was in Vegita's arms. I went limp against the strong warmth of his chest, hearing Rom-kun's terrified sobs of "Edeeta! Edeeta!" begin to recede slowly. Vegita's pale, tear-streaked face and the horror and growing rage as he saw what they had done to my hands seemed far away. I know I spoke to him. I know Bardock flew at Mousrom's men with a roar like a springing lion and began to kill them. I saw Vegita rise and walk calmly to Mousrom and kill him without hesitation. He came back to me, taking me back in his arms, rocking me against him, gentle fingers tracing the lines of my face, and I floated away under that soothing caress, far away from everything bad, everything hurtful, suspended in a womb-like cocoon of peace.  
I woke once to find Nail hovering over me, his hands glowing with the green radiance of his healing power. Bardock was beside me, and Rom-kun was still in my arms. "…I have done a deep healing and a uteral purge to guard against conception," I heard Nail telling Bardock softly. "But I cannot heal the worst of her wounds…"

"Sleep now, girl," Bardock murmured quietly. I sank back beneath the surface of consciousness again.

I dreamed of Scopa sitting with my Momma in her garden. She was telling him what a nice young man he was and offering him lemonade. I woke up crying in our bed at the villa, the warmth of Vegita's body wrapped around me. Rom-kun was gone, and my arms were empty. Vegita turned on his side beside me, staring down at me solemnly, as my sobs grew louder and I lost control of myself completely. It occurred to me, somewhere in that clinical, analytical part of my brain that processes fact without emotion, that I hadn't let myself, my emotions, go in longer than I could remember. Maybe not since that day on the mountaintop in the northern crags. Repressing pain, shaking off pain and grief and horror and getting right back up again had become second nature to me. I wasn't shaking this off. I cried until the sobs rose to wails, then shrieks, lost to any semblance of rational thought. I wailed until my voice began to fail, until my strength began to seep away into a kind of mournful languor. And all the time, he held me, not speaking, just being there, just loving me. He loved me. He loves me…

Little by little, I began to speak. "It's my fault," I whispered. I had drawn him into our little conspiracy of peace. I had not spoken, not confessed, though I knew to do so might have meant Rom-kun's death. "I-I could have said something while they were-were hurting him, but I was afraid of what would happen to Rom-kun. I should have spoken up! I should have confessed to anything they wanted to save him!"

His arms tightened around me, his deep, soft voice held a distant rumble of murderous rage. "It is not your fault," he said. "It is Mousrom's fault. And he has paid with his life."

"Scopa..." I almost moaned his name. I could see his face in my mind, hear his voice telling me he wasn't afraid anymore, see the light and life leave his eyes as Mousrom snapped his neck- "He never hurt anyone in his life!" My voice had begun to rise stridently, a discant to the sound of distant roars in my mind, the dragon howling her song of hate and rage, her own grief for Scopa. "He saved more lives than I can count. And he-he-" I sat up, pulling roughly out of his embrace, my still tender hands balling up into fists. "Everything that's good and decent always gets torn to pieces! All my life...everyone and everything I've ever loved or cared about. And I just get back up every time my life is destroyed and start building another one, when I know...when I know it'll all be blow to hell in the end! Romayn and Scopa and-and you and everyone in my life. I'm going to wake up one day and find Rom-kun's been killed in a training exercise after they take him to the children's barracks in two years. Or that you or Bardock or Kyouka or Articha has been killed in battle somewhere. Or that your father has finally ordered you to put me aside, and you pack me off world as a free woman, but-but I'll have to leave Rom-kun behind, and-"

"That will not happen," He said, soft and harsh. "Not if I live to see a thousand years. Bulma...hear me!" He sat and faced me, studying me almost uncertainly before he reached out and took me in his arms again. "I will not tell you no one you value will die. That will happen. But my father will not command me in any way ever again."

He would have known, or figured out by now, that his father had set us up to prod him into to breaking the geas. "You didn't-"

"No..." He growled. "But it was a near thing."

Of course, he hadn't killed his father, not even for this. He loved me, loved Rom-kun, had felt more affection and friendship for Scopa than he would have ever admitted. But he loved his father, too. And the most marked of all the changes in Vegita since his recovery was that he was probably completely unable to kill his father now. Or anyone he cared about. "Your father told you that he would 'help you set yourself to rights.' He knew seeing us in Mousrom's hands, would break the geas in your mind. And all it cost him was your love and Scopa's life..." The old bastard…the evil, evil old bastard!

I could see he knew this was true, see him fighting with the rage of what his father had done, twisting away from the hurt and betrayal. "Jeiyce is my prisoner, Bulma."

I blinked in absolute amazement. "How…?"

"Bardock found his hideout from a clue we received in an intercepted hyper light transmission. Tsiru-sei-a world we would never have thought the look for him. I went there while you were recovering, I fought him and took him alive." The fierce light in his eyes, full of so much hate for the man who had stripped him of his pride, his will, and ultimately his own identity was…it made his look like the other Vegita. The Evil Prince. I shivered against him. Of course, they looked the same. The Evil Prince wasn't dead. Telling myself he had merged with the man I loved was a pretty, poetic way of lying to myself, of trying to make the man who had killed my son and used me so brutally someone else. Or was I wrong? Had Jeiyce killed the Prince of that nightmare summer house in the Western Sea as surely as if he'd driven I stake through his black heart? I didn't know…gods, I didn't know!

"The war will be over soon, Bulma," Vegita was saying. "I will execute him on the first night of Moontime, the day of my father's Centennial, in eight weeks time. In spite of what Jeiyce believes, the war will die with him, though not immediately. We will hunt the rebels still. Seeking them out and battling them where we can find them will keep us vigilant and in fighting trim for many years to come, but, as you have said, they will be difficult to find. And with your rad shields, they cannot strike at us." He had begun trembling with some kind of internal conflict, just a faint shudder rippling though his body. "When Jeiyce is dead, and the Empire is once more stable and strong, I will take the throne. My father-" He stopped. He had come to the sticking point of all his plans for the future. His father. Who he must kill with his own hands to ascend to the throne of the Vegita-sei. He knew his father wanted this, knew what the King had done to me, to Scopa. He knew there was no other road for him. But it would tear him apart when the time came. He met my gaze, his eyes speaking more eloquently of anguish than any words.

"He knows," I said softly. "He knew signing that arrest order would make it easier for you. He knows you're ready."

He nodded. "When I am king, I will serve my people and protect them and lead them. I will give my life for them, if need be. But I will order all things in my own household as I wish, custom and propriety be damned. I will take no queen. I will find a strong warrior to bear my son...but he will be yours to raise. You-" He touched my face. "You have proven yourself a gifted instructor of kings to be. Romayn will be his foster brother, his first lieutenant, and his bodyguard. As such, he will be trained in the Palace alongside my heir, and he will not go the barracks. You are free, woman. Go if you will, you and the boy. Or stay and help me rebuild my empire. It is your right, since you have helped to save it."

I kissed him, awash in another storm of tears. I couldn't seem to stop. There was too much happiness and grief swirling around inside me to separate the two, and each positive emotion was threaded through with sorrow or pain. I wanted to feel good! I wanted to feel young and alive, free of regret and all the horrors of my past. I wanted him to take it all away before the grasping hands of all the dead I'd laid to rest pulled me down forever. I deepened the kiss, my body molded to his, feeling his heart begin to race.

"Make love to me," I whispered.

"Bulma..." He began, searching my eyes, trying to fathom what it was I really wanted, really needed.

"I need you," I sobbed. "I want...I want to stop hurting. I want to feel like I did that last day at Bardock's house. Happy and loved and at peace. I want you, Vegita...please..."

He did as I asked. Whatever it was he saw in my eyes convinced him that this was the best remedy. He threaded his hands through my hair and lay me down gently. He began tracing my body with unsteady fingers, his dark eyes full of love, but also full of fear. That he would hurt me, that he would ruin this. Every touch was light as a feather, and his face…he looked like a man worshipping in a temple, worshipping his goddess made flesh. He began to kiss his way down my body, and every new inch of skin his mouth burned over caught fire, my heart and lungs straining harder with every breath. When he came to the cleft of my thighs, he paused, grinning up at me mischievously when I made some kind of low, soft growl of need.

"Patience woman," he whispered. And he began a slow, maddening trek along my inner thigh, playing all my senses, every synapse, every nerve ending, and then his mouth found my center, teasing climax after climax out of me until I lashed my head back like a wild thing and screamed. When…Kami, when had he learned to do that?! I thought in a shuddering daze as he rose up and crawled up my body in a sweet backtrack of kisses over every inch of skin he'd missed on his way down. He was grinning faintly with satisfaction at a job well done, arching his back like a big cat as he sank down against me, and kissed my trembling mouth. His smirk slipped away, as I wrapped arms and legs around him, feeling him hard above me, almost insane now with the need to have him inside me. He moved in, just barely past my inner threshold…then he stopped, his heart hammering against mine like a drum.

"Vegita..." I nearly pleaded.

"Shhh..." He said, shaking in my arms like a leaf, his face drenched in sweat. He began to sink in and out of me, never going deeper than he had been, in an sweet, agonizing series of shallow strokes that kept bringing me just to the brink of release, always just shy of it, his eyes locked on mine, his lips against mine, every muscle in his body drawn taught with holding back from burying himself in me completely. Oh gods, what was he waiting for…

"Please..." I tried to gasp. "Vegita-"

"Do you want me?" He whispered against my lips.

"Yes...Yes!"

He was still rising and falling above me, still denying me, as he took a long, deep shuddering breath, and began to speak, his voice raw with the strain of how much he wanted me. "You are free, Bulma...Romayn is yours to keep. This world is yours, your home." He withdrew, poised against me, rivulets of sweat running down his face. "I swore to return to you all that I took. Home and child and freedom are yours, as much as a mortal man can replace such things-everything except your mate. I will give you that if you will have me, Bulma." He kissed me slowly, deeply, his eyes burning into mine, trying to read my mind, to feel what I was feeling. "Will you have me?"

And my heart seemed to have gone still, like a coronary stutter from a sudden shock. He was asking me…He wanted me to be his. His lover, his mate, his wife, his everything. And I wanted…oh gods, I didn't know! I knew I had loved him with all my heart at Bardock's house. I knew he had broken his back and his heart and his pride at every turn since returning to the Capital, to become the man I loved again.

But…there was a way to know for sure, beyond doubt, who was holding me in his arms. A test so simple… "Do you love me?"

And something inside me began to wail with sorrow as his mouth clamped shut in a knee-jerk reaction against the words. "Bulma-"

He couldn't do it. There was still enough of the beast left to reach up from whatever pit Vegita had buried him in and close his mouth against the utterance that had come as easily as breathing to him before he remembered his past.

"Do you love me?" I asked again, soft and adamant. "The man I loved at Bardock's house, the man you should have been, told me he loved me. I see him inside you. More than I ever imagined possible. He's not gone...he's a part of you. I see him in everything you've done since we returned, but you have to bring him out a little more. You have to say it!"

"I-I-" He growled in frustration, tried again. "Bulma..." He met my eyes, his gaze full of self loathing, full of lost helpless need to say what he felt. He growled again, softer this time, and sat up with me astride his lap, his whole heart in his eyes…and sank his teeth deep into the base of my neck, pushing his thoughts toward mine like a gentle melody interweaving with the song of my own thoughts. It wasn't invasive. I could see what he was offering to show me, to bare himself to the core of his own soul to show me what he couldn't seem to say. But I had to reach out and take it. I brushed through the outer edges of his mind, tasting his heart, his soul. They felt like the wind and the sky, the warm sun on my face. His heart felt wild and strong, like a wolf or a lion's heart. You couldn't tame it, couldn't conquer it, but if you won its love, it loved you with all its being. It would change all its violent, murderous ways to be at your side, to have the smallest scrap of your affections. It would die for you. I opened my mind to his, and I let him in. And I showed him everything that was me, all my self. I felt him pouring into me as his body began to move against mine, as he continued to move against me, without actually entering me. He took the full measure of all I was, of all I felt for him, all my hate, all my love, my fears, my hopes, and his chest began to wrack with tearing sobs as he saw all the evil he had done through my eyes, all he had become, all I needed him to be. He brushed past the dragon's prison with a shudder of horror, seeing it for what it was, the burial ground of all my blackest, most mindless hatred and sin. Somehow, he couldn't hear her voice, railing her rage at what I was doing. The thunder of her roar was deafening. He didn't linger there to see all the horrors that were hidden in that obsidian cell or the secret of Jeiyce's weapons builder.

Shame and wonder were swirling through him, that I could feel anything but revulsion, hate and loathing for him, that these were things he had bought and paid for a dozen time over, that I saw him as someone new, a man born the day the Evil Prince died somewhere in the deepest dungeons of Avaris. He was mine, I saw. Mine to command, mine to love if I would. He would move the stars around in their orbit in heaven if I asked him, or spend the last ounce of his strength trying. I was…I was his axis.

But the other…the other was still inside him. I could feel the ghost of the Evil Prince sleeping in the darkest places of his heart, the place where he had killed too many people to number and shouted with joy as he did it. The place of violent, blood-stained murder, of rage, of butchery and rape and malice and above all, the touchstone of all his sins, overweening pride and arrogance. It was all alive inside him, and he had, and always would, call on that part of his nature when he must. But I…I couldn't live with the Dark Prince in my heart and head. It would drive me stark-raving mad. I had to know it was just a ghost, that my Vegita was the real one, the man who should have always been.

"Say it, Vegita," I said again, my voice breaking as he poured his whole soul into my hands, to embrace or smash into pieces. A wisp of thought, his, that the latter was my due if I wished, fluttered past, that I was the measure of all he knew or understood of love.

"I love you!" He choked the words out, almost shouting them, forcing them past the maw of his own hate dragon, the shade of the monster he had been. And as he did…as he did, the other did not stir, did not move. He was dead! Dead!

_I love you, Vegita...you are the Vegita I loved! You are! _I didn't say it aloud and I didn't need to. I would never have to put anything I felt for him into crude words again unless I wanted to.

I sank down over him, letting him in, deep and slow, my mouth over his, my eyes full of tears. We moved together, slow and sweet, and I gasped with soft laughter as I realized we were in the air, hovering over the bed, my body wrapped around his, his around me, my mind in his, his in mine. I pressed him on, urging him to move faster, harder, as we spun in a slow circle in the air. The tingling tickle of his energy was rippling over my skin, encasing me in his aura, holding me up as though I was weightless. I felt like my lungs would burst, like my heart would blow apart as we melted together toward a final meshing of our souls, locked together in a blaze of love and hate and need, and-and he thrust into me one last time, and I came, weeping and laughing. It burned inside me like the fire of a newborn sun. I can't even describe the end in anything as pitifully insufficient as words. He cried out, falling over the edge with me, his voice ragged in my ear as he came inside me, his whole body shaking with the weight and truth of the words he uttered. "I love you, Bulma," he whispered. "Oh gods, I love you..."

He was wondering if it were possible to die of heart-failure from joy alone. The room seemed to be wheeling around him in a pleasant, dizzy blur, every nerve ending tingling with pleasure. And I…I could feel it. I could hear his thoughts.

"I can feel you," I said tremulously. "...still inside me...everywhere."

"We went so deep because of the moon," he said softly, his breathing slowing, his heart still hammering against mine. "It will be dangerous soon, for us to share the same bed..." A thread of worry, of concern, shot through him.

I kissed him. "But not yet."

"Not yet," he agreed. "Sleep now...tomorrow will be a better day."

I went to Med Center his morning. Vegita wanted me to stay at home, but I knew I had to keep moving. If I sat in the villa all day, alone with nothing but my own thoughts…that would be bad. And final cloister lockdown for the duration of Moontime was only a month away. The babies would need me. Hiru sat in the surgery, his scarred face a blank mask, not moving, not seeming to notice I was in the room when I came to take Rom-kun from Bardock. Kharda was destroyed, I knew from the hyper light news feed. Nachti…

"Is she all right?" I asked, taking his hand. He squeezed my fingers, a light, gentle pressure.

"I've had word. She's fine, Bulma-chan. She's all right now. There's a lot to do before Moontime, but I'll see her soon." He smiled at me and he looked...relieved. At peace. There was no more torment or grinding worry in his face. But he was heart-broken over Scopa's death. He couldn't talk about it, and neither could I. Everything in Med Center was still and silent, no chatter, no idle conversation. A pall of mourning sat over the entire complex, so thick it was tangible.

Zarbon found me late this afternoon. His face was…He was in that black, deep place that is beyond tears. I knew that place, knew it too well, and my heart broke all over again to see him there.

"I'm leaving, love," he said tonelessly. "Listen to me. Take Rom-kun and go away with Nail-san. You can get through the shield. Go now and don't look back."

"No," I said steadily. "I'm saving everyone, Zarbon. Everyone." Everyone except Scopa…

"It's too late for that," he said. "Vegita-sei is going to die. Don't get between the Saiyans and justice, Bulma."

I had the sudden sense of Nail just behind me, standing like a tall emerald-skinned watchdog at my shoulder. "I'll stop you," I said.

"It's too late to stop anything." Then he leaned down and kissed me on the forehead. "I won't see you again, love."

He turned to leave, and Bardock stood behind him. I even hadn't seen him enter the room. Both men froze, poised on the edge of violence. Bardock stepped into his path. "I read the arrest report, Rashia-jin," Bardock said coldly. "You brought this down on him and on Bulma and my son."

Zarbon swallowed as the blow struck home. He didn't argue or try to defend himself. But Bardock didn't attack, only stared him down. "Go," Bardock grated finally. "Go back to your Maiyosh-jin master. Scopa would beg me for your life if he still lived. But if we meet again, I will send you to him, Zarbon."

Zarbon smiled grimly. "I'll see him soon enough. Take Bulma and the boy and leave this world, Bardock. Before it's too late."

And Bardock just stood and watched him go.

"There is something terrible in his mind," Nail said softly.

"Of that, I have no doubt," Bardock rumbled. "He is going to his death. We will not see him again."

I tried to eat today and began to cry over my meal. Scopa is everywhere here, his things, his face tied to a dozen memories in every single room. I knew Rom-kun was beside me, knew I shouldn't cry in front of him. He was so little, so little, and he had seen what they had-had done to Scopa and myself. I needed me to be strong and comfort him. But as I sat there trying to clog up the tears, his small hand touched my face. He had crawled into my lap, his black eyes huge and full of unshed tears.

"Momma? I dreamed about Scopa last night. He was sitting with a pretty lady in a garden. He was telling her about us."

Too much had happened in the last 24 hours to be shocked. I kissed his little face. "I had the same dream, baby."

"It was real, Momma. Don't be sad. It's really nice there...I remember. Scopa's happy, Momma, but-but-" His face began to crumble. "I still miss him bad, Momma!" And he began to cry. We sat there and cried for a long time. Until we were all cried out, as Poppa used to say. But, oh gods, I believe him. It was real. How else could we have had the same dream? And the memory of that dream, of Scopa and Momma sitting in her garden together, got me through the rest of that first day.

I woke this morning tangled in Vegita's arms, and stared into his sleeping face. I caught a sense of flight, of air rushing past my face, and the horror that he would be too late to save me. He was dreaming of yesterday, of his and Bardock's mad flight to save us.

"Are we moonbonded?" I asked him later, before I left for Med Center. "I can still feel you..."

"No..." He said, frowning with the worry I felt leaking out of him. "We went deeper than we should have, as I said, because of the moon. It is more than a simple marriage bond, but the intensity of the empathic link will fade as the day goes on. You understand how important it is that no one knows what is between us?"

"Yes," I said softy.

I understand. What we did last night is permanent, and far deeper than either of us imagined because the Season of the Moon is so close. It will be dangerous for anyone to know, even when he is King, and death for me if anyone finds out right now. The King…Vegita's father will try his damnedest to kill me when it becomes evident I'm not packing up and leaving the second the war is over.

This evening, at sunset, we burned Scopa's body in Saiyan fashion, as though he had been a warrior of Vegita-sei. He had been, Vegita told me solemnly. In his own way. I raised the first piece of wood to his bier. Everyone added more. Everyone, because everyone who had known him called him a friend. There were so many warriors, men I didn't know, hovering around the top of Med Center, in silent respect. Articha and Turna had returned sometime during the night, and both lay their own branch of blackwood to the bier. Then Vegita did the same. He turned his face up and around, glaring murder at those assembled warriors in the sky around us, all of whom Scopa had treated at some point, who had gasped in astonishment.

"It is just," he said in a voice that carried to the farthest of them, "that a Prince honor his good and faithful servants. Whosoever they be!"

Then we came home. I lay beside Vegita and cried all night. At some point Rom-kun crawled onto the bed, crying too, and Vegita sat up, pulling him between us. The funeral is over. Tomorrow…tomorrow we have to deal with him being gone forever.

It's getting so familiar, the feeling of deep grief. I am so tired. Tired to death. I found out what Hiru meant when he said Nachti was fine. She's dead. She was killed in the confusion and fire when Kharda City was destroyed, Nail said. When it became known that Mousrom was dead, everyone in Kharda, Saiyan and alien alike, began to riot. The slaves of Kharda burned their own city to the ground, leveled it, in disgust and horror of what had gone on there, and the Saiyan residents had finished the job. They had seen Mousrom's torture factory as a blight on the honor of all true warriors. And sometime, somehow, during all of this, Nachti died. Nail said he didn't know the details of Nachti's death, maybe no one does. It doesn't matter. She's just as dead. Hiru won't talk to me or anyone about it. He still goes about his work each day, almost cheerfully. He told me again today that he'll see her soon, after Moontime is over. I don't think he's in denial. I think he means he'll be joining her soon.

It's two weeks since my last entry. Articha came to me three days ago and gave me a project that couldn't wait, even in the heat of cloister preparations at Med Center, even while I'm still wracking my brains for security leaks in the design of the shield and the authentication of space traffic control. She told me in this hard, inflectionless voice what generally happens to the young girls, those too old for cloister and too young to have physically matured to the madness of desire that the moon will awaken in everyone left on the surface.

"The strong survive," She said bleakly. "It has always been the way of things. I have prevailed upon the King to alter custom this moon. We have lost too many warriors in this war to throw away the lives of our young in such a cavalier fashion. The King agrees with me."  
Huh. He was probably afraid to cross her in this. Smart man. I encapsulated and stripped down six large troop carriers, using micro-capsule welders to redesign the ships in a fraction of the time it would have taken had they been full-sized. Articha called up all female warriors stationed onworld between the ages of six and fourteen, and in about two days, she and Turna will take them off world for the duration. Yesterday morning, she told me if anything 'unfortunate' happened, to leave send out a wide broadcast hyperlight message buoy on a specific frequency. She would do the same.

Last night I dreamed I heard the black dragon, my hate dragon, screaming in her prison. And though she couldn't escape, she spat up a dream, a healthy helping of poison for myself and the man in my arms.

I dreamed...I dreamed of the summer house in the Western Sea. And through the bond, the too-deep bond that ties our hearts and minds together, Vegita dreamed it too, feeling all I felt, reliving the memory with me.

We both woke in the same instant, jarred out of sleep by the phantom pain of breaking bones and tearing flesh, and we lay side my side in haunted, terrible silence, not touching. He was shaking apart with reaction to what he had seen and felt, but I had no comfort of offer him.

I got up and went into the bath, even though it was three hours until dawn.

I left him and didn't come back to bed.

Vegita's not showing any symptoms of moon madness yet. That's strange. He says he thinks it's the bond somehow. I found him this morning, working on shipping requisitions that will send more medical aid to the farming and game colonies that were hit so consistently by the Rebels. He looked up from the files, his body tensing, unsure of how to react, afraid to touch me. After my dream last night, I spent the early hours walking through the hills, thinking, soothing demons and ghosts that refuse to lie still.

I reached out and took his hand, bending down to kiss his lips. "This will happen. You know that."

"I know," he said hoarsely. "I would give my life to take it back, Beloved."

"That won't take it back," I said. "So, live. Live and love me."

He stood and put his arms around me, still hesitantly and gentle. "All my days, Bulma."

The kids are piling up at the entrance of Med Center like lemming on the edge of a cliff. Next Moontime, we need to organize this better, not have them all show up on the same damn day. The babies, my babies, the ones whose infant conditioning programming Hiru and I tampered with, are part of the one-year-old Infant Barracks now.

They...they sing. All of Scopa's Madrani toddler's songs. They can just barely walk, but the drill sergeants marched them up to the main entrance without incident. All the other, older crops of kids fought and bit and had to be pummeled into obedience by their sergeants, but my babies...they obeyed, they marched...and they sang. Some of them smiled at me, waving back at Rom-kun as they passed. Their sergeant seemed unnerved by all this, but he said he's never had a better, more easily managed group of cubs, and the lack of conditioning doesn't seem to have impaired their will to fight at all.

I'm up to my neck in hyper active children. Hyper active Saiyan children. Vegita sent Bardock and his squad to help out with the cloistering of the kids-by this, I mean every child on Vegita-sei five and under. Did I mention that the drill instructors of the pee wee barracks just dropped their charges-all of whom Bardock and Toma affectionately refer to as "the little fuckers"-on the doorstep of Med Center and ran for the hills. They spar, they play, they fight, and occasionally blast each other, taking out sections of the walls, ceilings and floors during all three of these activities. I have yet to be able to discern the difference between sparring, play and actual fighting-they all look pretty much the same to me.

I thought I'd have to take the dogs back to the villa until after Moontime after I found a group of boys from the three year old barracks encircling Baka, discussing whether to cook him or just eat him raw. Bardock made a nice little speech that morning to all of our small guests, describing in lurid detail what the Saiyan no Ouji would do to anyone who harmed his dogs. Now, the kids are all afraid to come near either dog for fear of accidentally hurting them. Baka and Yaro somehow sensed the change in their place on the food chain, and have had a great deal of fun chasing children all over Med Center since then.

Sequestering over thirty thousand Saiyan children between the ages of infancy and five is an experience that only comes once a decade. Thank the gods for that. Next week, we'll be ready to take another thousand below and put them into cryo. The King had put ban on all pregnancies last year. The incu-pods in the incuward are all empty. So, that means roughly twenty thousand of the kids can be placed in the incu-pods on a bio-stasis setting and won't have to be tranked into unconsciousness soon.

Rom-kun spends his time during the day with the kids from the one-year-old barracks. _My_ one year olds, the ones whose programming I altered. He says he's made some friends, but is a little impatient that none of them can really carry on a conversation yet. He's teaching them new songs. I nearly began crying in front of everyone in the surgery yesterday when I recognized the songs-they are all songs Scopa taught Rom-kun.

Gods...Scopa is everywhere here, everywhere. I miss him so much, I miss hearing his voice and having him to talk to. He would be watching me with a little concern this week, telling me I look too tired, asking if I'm sleeping.

I'm not sleeping. I don't know why. Sometimes I dream, horrible things, but I can't remember them in the morning. Sometimes my dreams interlace with Vegita's and that…that can be very good or very bad, depending on what each of us is dreaming.

Some nights I don't sleep at all.

Scopa would have noticed how I seem to slip away during the rare moments I'm alone and still. I am so busy, fighting the clock, that it's not a problem right now, but after Moontime...I'll have to deal with it. Is it post traumatic stress disorder? That sounds right. Which trauma? Take your fucking pick.

I wonder if, when Moontime is over, I'll even know what to do with myself?

There won't be any great horror or evil to fight. I will be able to relax. That is, if Vegita-ou doesn't try to have me killed out of fear his 'wayward' son will try to put an alien on the throne beside him and tear the Empire he spent his life forging to pieces in doing so.

I think Vegita is thinking the same thing. He said something last night at supper, something about his father having given him the security codes to the Royal treasury and the off world accounts on Serulia. He hasn't said anything about it, but I think the King is slowly passing on the throne's last and most sensitive secrets to his son. I think they've discussed it, and that a day or so after Moontime is passed, Vegita will take the throne.

Which is another way of saying he is going to kill his father. God of gods...I know it's old custom, and I know Vegita-ou is more than okay with it, is ready to die in fact. Saiyans do not grow old. Old age is dishonor and a sign of cowardice, fear of death. To choose the time of your death and set your house in order somewhere in the hale part of middle age is the best they hope for. They see it as an act of love

to-to kill your parent rather let them grow old and infirm. But gods...it will rip Vegita to pieces as he is now.

Even if this had come three or four years ago, it would have torn him up inside, I think. He loves the evil old bastard so much. And now...now, Vegita is different, a different man, and...it will be-Gods, what was that?!

I thought...I...I thought I heard a roar, like a huge...a huge predator, out past the hills behind the villa.

I hear roaring. It's sounds distant, but it's getting closer.

Where is Vegita? He's late tonight...

I wish he were here.

Half the ward is empty now. We ran out of incu-pods by the time we got to the three year olds, so we're taking the older kids down a few at a time and sedating them. Then we'll button Med Center up like a quarantine ward, so the kids won't get even the faintest flicker of Moonlight or the scent of, um, rutting adults. That might wake them from the tranks as easily as moonlight, even though they are all years and years away from sexual maturity themselves.

Nail wants to do a deep healing treatment on me. His kind of healing.

He says in that quiet, deep voice of his that I am not well. I know he doesn't mean physically.

I feel...I feel well. Well, I fell better than I have in a long, long time, but that's not saying a whole hell of a lot, is it? I sort of...collapsed today. Not really collapsed, just kind of went out to lunch for a moment or two. I am looking in the bedroom mirror right now. I look tired, but otherwise, just fine. My color is good, vibrant even. I am almost glowing, I think. To have climbed out of such an abyss to where I am now, loved and surrounded by people I love-my son, my lover, my friends, my career, my...my...

Okay.

I think Nail would be right in diagnosing nervous exhaustion. He is watching me very closely. He told me to talk to him whenever I want. I could have talked to Scopa. I could have talked to Nachti. Scopa would have drawn things out of me I hadn't even acknowledged were eating at me, and Nachti would have given me her acerbic, one syllable assessment that would put it all in perspective. But they're both dead. Nail is a good man, but I don't want another best friend. I know a big part of this is the bill come due for having pushed Scopa and Nachti's deaths to the side because there was too much to do to stop and grieve.

I went and sat with Hiru today during lunch, held his hand, though neither of us spoke through the whole meal. I want to hope for the best, but how many times can a man lose everything he loves and pick himself up again? He's like a ghost already, though his body's still alive, wandering through his day to day duties. He won't recover this time.

Gods, I am so tired. Is that why I keep nodding off? I dreamt last night that the hate dragon was screaming in her prison, claws slashing at the walls of her cell. I woke feeling like I hadn't slept at all, like I'd been wrestling the scaly bitch all night long. When this is all over, I'll go to Bardock's house and spend a few weeks with Rom-kun and Vegita, walking through the moors, sleeping late, eating too much, making love every night. Resting. The three of us will go away for a while, me and my...my...my family…

What was I saying?

Oh, yeah. The solution for the moment is to work. Work on a last bit of security for Vegita-sei's own stalemate shield, work to get the last of the kids under wraps before they begin to go Oozaru early with the moon's approach.

Vegita told me last night that during his first moon he whined and bitched to stay awake for Moontime. He went Oozaru five weeks before the moonrise. He tore the top off of the palace and trashed half the city, before a dozen Elites changed and wrestled him down. He was four years old. It's time for Rom-kun to go into his own incu-pod. I had his pod separated from the endless warehouse rows below in incu-ward and placed it in the shield server room next to my own offices. In my little workroom. So I can see him sleeping inside and know he's okay, even if I can't hold him for more than a month. Bardock helped me move the pod, watching me very closely. He knows, maybe better than anybody, how much Rom-kun means to me, how much...how much I need my baby...

I don't mind Bardock's constant shadow now. He's family, too, isn't he? My father-in-law, my son's grandfath-no. No. My son's father. Rom-kun's father.

At night, I lie in Vegita's arms, both of us exhausted. He makes love to me so gently. Sometimes he just holds me. I don't let him see how tired I really am, how frayed at the edges. He loves me. He loves me so much!

But sometimes, I wake in the night and feel my dragon trying to tear loose from her prison. My dragon is a she. The pain is low and deep like the pangs of childbirth or when a man tears you up inside as he uses you.

It's four weeks til Moontime.

Today I moved to Med Center for the duration. I kissed Vegita goodbye and packed up baby and dogs, leaving him to await the coming of the moon alone. Today I lay Baka in a tank after Rom-kun accidentally hurt him, crushing his pelvis and sternum from nothing more than an over-enthusiastic hug. I watched his little face, sleeping so sweetly, kissing the glass that separated us. He cried until we put him under, so full of horror at what he had done. He didn't want to hug me goodbye. He was so afraid to touch me after what he'd done to Baka Vegita had to carry him to the flyer and strap him in. When we got the Med Center, he wailed in his carseat, refusing to let me pick him up, until I called Bardock from the surgery to carry him inside to his incu-pod.

Vegita made it a little better. I found them this morning in the garden, Vegita holding Rom-kun in an odd, awkward embrace, speaking to him softly, telling him about the moon and how it made Saiyans violent and takes all their self control as it approaches. Then he looked up at me from over the boy's head, his eyes meeting mine, hard with the effort to hold his own emotions in check. And afraid. Afraid for me, of what he might do to me if I stayed even another day. Last night, he and Rom-kun seemed fine, but somewhere between nightfall and dawn, the moon began to work on both of them. This morning, I could see the reddish glint in their eyes, the first flickers of the madness to come.

It's later. I doubled over after dinner, sick and vomiting, shaking all over, feeling the black razor claws of my dragon trailing along the lining of my womb as I heaved. Nail came and found me, helped me clean myself up.

Then he asked me if I needed an incu-pod, telling me there were four or five we'd held in reserve for emergencies. He told me if I wait until after the first trimester I'll have to carry the baby until viability before removing him. He just assumed I knew I was pregnant.

A baby...a new baby.

Vegita's baby. Was this what he meant on our wedding night when he said he had given me back all that he to took from me? Of all the reparations, the most precious and important. He's given me another son.

I'm going to tell him tonight. He'll be happy.

Won't he?

I told him. He said, "No." He said, "I cannot let it be." His people would split in half over it, his Empire would fall into civil war. His people would kill me and the baby.

It's common sense. I understand it.

I collapsed at first. I came to with him shaking me, his face terrified, his voice breaking, almost in tears. I couldn't hear him at first. The dragon's roaring was so loud I couldn't hear anything.

He wants me safe. He loves me. He loves me so much. He...

I left him. I don't remember what I said as I left. I left him kneeling behind me, tears standing unshed in his eyes. I went to back Med Center. I think I crashed the flyer somewhere within sight of the complex. I walked the rest of the way, and with each step my black dragon tore free of the weakened, brittle walls of her cell. Before I reached the main compound she was free. And...and just as I had known she would, she turned on me and began to rip at me, shrieking and slashing, rounding and blasting all her boundless, obsidian hatred inward. Inward on me. She was screaming names, and her voice...her voice was mine, that voice that had stood on the mountaintop in the North and raged like a demon at Heaven and Hell and everything in between. _Son-kun, Poppa, Momma, Scopa, Yamcha, Raditz, Romayna, Noira, Duska, Nachti, Hiru, Karot-chan! Karot-chan! Karot-chan! Where is your baby, you stupid, faithless forgetful bitch?! _She shrieked. _Where is Karot-chan?!_

She tore me apart, left nothing standing in the house of my mind, and by the time I reached the landing of the garden conservatory in the center of Med Center, she lay quiet. Quiet because there was nothing left of me bigger than a bleeding scrap for her to sink her claws into.

Bardock found me wondering in the gardens, tending the flowers there. I hadn't come to the conservatory since Mousrom's men had taken us through the sky light, and we had rerouted all our resources, including water, to the incu-ward, until after Moontime. All the flowers were dead. I watered them anyway. Bardock seemed to sense there was something wrong immediately. He tried speaking to me, but I was singing and told him to hush. That he'd wake my baby. He stopped trying to talk to me then and just picked me up and carried me to Nail. There were other people there, other voices around me. I thought I heard Hiru sobbing softy. He and Bardock are the only ones who would have recognized the song I was singing. I heard someone say something about symnothol. That cleared away the nice, blurry fog of nothing for a moment. I stopped my soft warbling song, stopped singing Karot-chan's lullaby song and managed to focus on Nail. Bardock was right beside him.

"No...no tranks."

"Lie still, girl," Bardock said, his face tense and pale. "The drugs will help you."

"My baby..."

"Romayn is safe in his incu-pod."

"No!" I said stridently, grabbing Bardock's hand, one flying protectively to my abdomen. "Symnothol causes birth defects. It'll hurt my baby."

No one made a sound. "Gods of mercy," someone said softly after a moment. Toma maybe.

I gripped Bardock's arm and found it trembling with suppressed rage. "He told me to get rid of the baby, Bardock. He said I'll be killed for carrying a half-breed heir to the throne. He says my baby has to die." I buried my face against the broad steel of his chest, clinging to him. "Don't let him make me, Bardock. Don't let him kill my baby again."

Bardock's chest rumbled against my body, his voice growling softly, full of a kind of quiet anger that was frightening. "That fool...that idiot fool boy!"

"We can take him out and hide him, Bulma-chan," Hiru said from somewhere in the gray blur around us. "Can't we?"

"We can take him and put him in an incu-pod, right beside Rom-kun," Nail said softly. "We'll sort this out when the moon has passed."

I smiled at him sweetly, feeling my entire body relax. "Okay," I said. Nail was my protector, he'd said. He'd take care of everything. The gods had sent him to take care of me.

They put me under and took the baby out, while Bardock and the others went through the motions of final quarantine lockdown.

I floated on a bed of clouds, sometimes with Karot-chan sleeping in my arms, sometimes lying in my bed at home, back at Capsule Corp, with Momma and Poppa speaking to me softly, telling me it would all be okay, telling me it was getting late, that it was time to wake up.

Sometime in the dead of night, I heard Hiru's voice, thick with sorrow and such absolute despair I pushed up through the layers of tranks and peaceful, vague madness to open my eyes.

"She is lost," Hiru was saying softly. "Noira and Duska and Nachti are dead. But gods...Bulma-chan was the unlucky one."

Zarbon bent over my bed in the dead silence of the surgery. He kissed me on the forehead. "I am so sorry, love. I will avenge you, Bulma. I will avenge you and Scopa and billions of others. When this is over, I'll take care of you, just as Scopa would have."

"She has finally escaped the Prince," Hiru said. "He cannot hurt her now."

"Vegita won't hurt me," I whispered. "He loves me. He said it out loud. He-" But the dragon screamed and flayed that thought with one dark, bloody talon, and I moaned and began to sob like a wounded animal. It hurt so much...

"Sleep, love," Zarbon said, soothing me back to calm, holding me as the pain slowly subsided into a dull ache. "I'll come back for you soon. I'll take you and your baby away-"

"Both babies," I said faintly.

"Both," he agreed hesitantly. I smiled and hugged him. It would be good to go on a vacation with Zarbon. I'd been so tired lately. Maybe Scopa and Vegita could come too.

"...and the less you know for the moment, the better," Zarbon was telling Hiru somewhere in the darkness around me. "I will call you when it is time, my friend."

"I will be here," Hiru hissed, his hand sliding into mine, gripping it warmly. "Whatever it is, I will be ready."

I drifted here and there, floating inside a dream, the roars of the dragon so distant I could barely hear her. She was lying quiet, but her barbed talons were embedded deep in my heart and mind. She flexed them now and then to remind me of her presence, to let me know she wasn't finished with me, and when she did this I would began to scream and flail in the bed restraints that kept me from clawing out my own eyes.

I woke to voices, Bardock and Nail speaking, quiet and tense and grim as death.

"This is no fantasy, Captain," Nail was saying. "I swear to you. He tried to enter, but I stopped him. He bore an invisibility shield, but I saw him because my kind do not see with eyes alone. I met him at the eastern shield port and faced him from this side of the shield. I saw what was in his mind. It is unlawful to scan another without leave, but...there was a pall of such grief, such hate, around his life force...it was as if he were a different man from the Zarbon we know. He carried a virus from Tsiru-sei that will fell your folk as it did the Tsiru-jin. This is Jeiyce's secret plan."

"When will they release it?" Bardock asked grimly.

"They released it five days ago."

I lay listening to the horror struck silence grow deafening, feeling my head clearing, my mind focusing, forced into cohesion under the weight of things to do, of need.

"My...my gods..." Toma was saying, his voice a choked whisper.

I sat up and removed the arm restraints. The good thing about them is that you can generally figure out how to take them off if you're in your right mind. I stood shakily and made my way over to the open door of Scopa's old offices, just off primary infirmary. Bardock turned and studied me as I stepped into the office.

"I'm all right," I said shortly, giving him a steady, lucid gaze. He nodded, curt and bleak, too stunned to argue with me.

"There's an antidote and a vaccine for every virus," I said, glaring around at the blanched, hopeless faces. "We just have to find it. Let's get to work."

I pulled all of Bardock's files from his expedition to Tsiru-sei and set to work. I'm going to sleep a little now. I am in my private offices, on my bed, and both my sons are with me, sleeping side my side in their incu-pods, one in cryo-sleep, one in full incubator mode.

I will save them. I will.

It's been three weeks. There's been no time to eat, sleep or make a diary entry until now. I've found two things. One is good, the other is bad. Very bad.

I have a vaccine. It's not an antigen, it's heat. I've injected every Saiyan inside Med Center with a fever inducing agent, then exposed them to the virus. If your body temperature is sufficiently high when you contract the disease, it dies in a few hours. You burn it out of your system. And once you've had it, you acquire an immunity.

Bardock and Toma came to blows over who the guinea pig was going to be. They've had three weeks, almost four, for the whole thing to really sink in and they are both fighting their own internal war against despair. Being Saiyan, their first impulse was to hit something. Kami, kharma is a merciless bitch. They've killed so many worlds, my own included. Now they're going to have to stand and watch the death of Vegita-sei. Toma won the right to be our test subject, pulling the ace of Bardock's oath to guard me.

We boosted his body temp and exposed him to the virus...and prayed. It worked. When I tested his blood twelve hours later, I found no sign of the virus. We vaccinated all of the children and the Saiyan guards inside Med Center the same way. My little son is easier. I just gave him a tiny gene therapy so he'll be naturally immune when he's born.

Everyone else...

It's the eleventh hour and I haven't found and antidote for those who've been exposed. A fever won't kill the virus once it begins to incubate inside you. Within a few hours, it adapts to the body heat of its host.

I changed the security lockout codes so no one but myself and Bardock can go in or out of the shield. I put a separate stalemate shield around the incu-ward and another around my offices where my sons are sleeping. With the Saiyans' help, I lay two twin carrier engines on the foundation points of Med Centers' shield, each with an external port I can open at liftoff, both linked to Med Center's central computers. The shield will hold together as I launch the entire complex into space. We're leaving tomorrow. We have to, because when the plague begins, Jeiyce's men will be on hand to see the show and gloat. Jeiyce is a prisoner for the moment but his men are coming. Nail says he senses they are already here, moving around the city, invisible and silent. Waiting.

Nail has scanned everyone in the complex. There were fourteen Red Network operatives and five more with what he calls 'poisoned hearts'. I called them up to Scopa's offices, one at a time, and told them we would no longer be needing their services. Those who refused to leave were forcibly ejected by Bardock and his squad.

Hiru...Nail says he is suicidal, but that he would never harm me or my sons. But he also says Hiru is a blank page to him. He can't see inside him, not completely.

Nail says that this is a sign of someone who is so badly wounded in mind and spirit he is unlikely to ever recover. What he means, is that...that Hiru is dead inside.

That's it for secrecy. Bardock and his people wanted very badly to kill the people we kicked out, knowing they were Red Network, knowing their world is still breathing, but it's dead and doesn't know it yet. He said they'll run straight to Jeiyce and tell him we have a vaccine. I told him if even one of them had a comm Jeiyce knows already. I told him to let them go.

We...we can't tell anyone outside of Med Center that they'll be dead in two days. Nail saw in Zarbon's mind how they timed the release of the plague on every world in the Empire, so that everyone would fall ill on the same day. On Vegita-sei, it'll be the first day of Moontime. The Season of the Moon. No one will think the symptoms are anything other than encroaching moonmadness. It won't help anyone to tell them. Let them live out the last days of their lives in happy anticipation of the festival, in relief that the war is all but won with Jeiyce's capture.

Vegita...

I've kept my mind away from the smallest thought of him to keep the dragon still. He's fought so hard to save his people. He would have fought the rest of his life to save his people from themselves if he had ever worn the crown. He loves this world and his people more than his own life.

He would have killed our baby to keep them from fighting a civil war...to...to keep them from killing me...

No.

There's always another answer. He should have thought harder. He should have known that...that it would shatter the already fractured glass house of my sanity to tell me I must see another baby son die for the good of the Empire. To tell me that I must kill this child myself.

My baby...

I am broken and shattered, and I am not sane. I am holding myself together with nothing more than my will to save the children, mine and all the others in Med Center.

Vegita...how could you not know that it would destroy me?

How can I love him? How can I still love him so much it's like a spear through my heart every time I close my eyes and see his face, smell his skin, feel his body against mine...holding me, caressing me...pinning me under him while he smirks down at me, while I scream and scream without a voice as he batters into me, tearing and breaking and shoving, and Karot-chan's little body isn't even cold yet, the ashes from his pyre are still smoldering...and...

I never forgot you, Karot-chan. Never never never! The roaring of the dragon is so loud now that she's free. I have to bite my tongue til it bleeds to be able to hear what people are saying to me over her howls.

It's better this way, isn't it?

Vegita will die. I can remember the good in him and not the evil, if there's enough of me left when this is over to remember anything at all.

I love him. I love Vegita more than my life and my health and my sanity. The hate dragon tore my mind to bleeding shreds because I love him.

Tomorrow night is moonrise.

I'm going out to see him tonight. To say goodbye. To be with him one more time. And to kill him while he sleeps. I love him, and he's going to die in horrible pain, knowing his whole world is dying with him. He's so strong, he'll live to see them all die before him. I'll make love to him. I'll hold him until he's asleep. Then I'll kill him. Because I love him so much.

I couldn't do it.

He was growling and red-eyed like a rabid wolf when I came to him. He was crying silently, tears rolling unnoticed down his cheeks, as he sat in his chair that looks out on the hill country. He told me to go. I stayed.

He carried me to our bed, his breath short and labored. He lay me down, covering my face with kisses, sobbing deep in his chest with relief, with the strain of holding the madness in check. He didn't hurt me, except when he bit down on my shoulder, reopening the scar that marked me as his mate.

"Beloved..." He kept saying, over and over. "Beloved."

We made love all night and I fell asleep in his arms, wrapped in a warm cloak of forgetfulness.

When he woke in the morning...his mind was gone at first. He had me roughly, snarling and biting, tearing and hurting, his eyes red and burning like hell's fire. He could still speak, but his thoughts and perceptions were all violent and twisted by the glare of the reddish morning light.

He came back to himself in time to keep from killing me. He cried again when he saw what he'd done to me. He put his arms around me before I left, and I held his shaking, feverish body in my arms. He was already sick, already dying. The ki-gun was in my hand, rewired especially for him, poised to kill him instantly, painlessly.

I couldn't!

The dragon wouldn't let me do it. She froze my hand, paralyzed my finger on the trigger. I...I told him I would see him again when it was all over. Maybe...maybe we will meet again in our next life. Maybe we will be happy.

When I came back through the shield Bardock yelled at me. He had gone berserk this morning when he realized I was gone. They had been turning Med Center upside down looking for me. The engines' computer had crashed during preflight power-up and they'd had to begin the launch prep all over again. Which meant it would be another fourteen hours before we could leave. That was cutting it close...too close if Jeiyce's men decided to just blast Vegita-sei to dust before we could launch.

Bardock stopped yelling at me when he realized I was hurt. He could see the bites and bruises that showed outside of my clothing, he could probably smell Vegita's scent on me.

"You went to him," he said softly. He lifted me up onto a treatment table gently, easing me back into Nail's arms.

"I was going to kill him," I said, while Nail peeled off my clothing so he could heal me. The warm, pure stream of his power began flowing through me like a river of healing water. I sighed with relief and it was almost a sob. "It'll be a painful death. I didn't want him to hurt. I couldn't kill him. I'm sorry..." I trailed off and just sat staring while Nail healed me, though I think I began singing softly under my breath at some point. I think that's why Bardock slapped me.

It was amazingly gentle for a Saiyan slap, but it still set my head and ears to ringing. I blinked and focused on him, lucid and coherent again.

"Thanks," I said softly, sounding much more like myself. "Feel free to smack me again if I start going loopy."

He leaned down and pressed his lips to my forehead. "Don't leave us, girl. Stay strong."

"Okay." I couldn't tell him I'm already gone.

I tried to speed up the engine prep time, and reinforced the quantum stabilizers around the stalemate shield's engine ports. I called Rikkuum to me and took my med satchel, showing him the encapsulized troop carrier pellet. I slung the satchel strap around his huge shoulders.

"Keep it with you all the time," I told him. "If Jeiyce's men show up too early, if anything goes wrong with the shield, if they somehow get inside, I want you to take my sons and Nail-san and run. Nail-san knows where to go. If the worst happens, your fist priority is to your Prince-your little Prince. Trunks-ouji."

I can feel the faint rumble of the engines revving beneath my feet. Just a few more hours. Inside Med Center, we wait in a hell of knowing what is to come.

Outside, Vegita-sei has begun to die.

It's all over.

We are safe and away.

The plague had killed nearly everyone by late afternoon. Then the Red Demons came for us. For the children. They decloaked and surrounded Med Center in siege, waiting for the Rebel Fleet to arrive and blow the planet's core. They found an ingenious way to destroy the shield around Vegita-sei, gouging the earth from beneath the shield generator, scooping it up like someone repotting a plant, and tossing the generator upward into the shield bubble. They destroyed my shield with itself.

But it was a one shot ploy, one they couldn't use against Med Center. Our generator is inside our own complex. They tried to break through the shield all afternoon. Then they tried to reason with me.

It was strange to finally see his face over my vid-comm. Jeiyce of Maiyosh, the Red Prince himself. I had thought he would be taller.

"Knock-knock, lovey," Jeiyce purred. "Let us in or we'll blow this planet out from under you."

"He's blustering," Toma sneered softly from behind me. Bardock growled a wordless agreement. "He can't touch us and he knows it."

Zarbon's face appeared on the screen beside Jeiyce's and I think I growled myself. It was a very Saiyan noise. "We don't want to hurt you or your staff, Bulma," Zarbon said anxiously. "We just-"

"Want to come in and kill all the children," I hissed at him coldly. "Fuck you both! Bang away at the shield until you all drop dead of old age. You don't have any weapons that can stand up to mine. The two of you should know that better than anyone."

"Bulma-" Zarbon's voice was so full of pain it was hard to keep the anger going. I closed my eyes and pictured the faces of all the children I'd tucked into their pods, the faces of my one-year-olds singing Scopa's nursery songs.

"Don't Bulma me, you goddam baby killer!" I spat. "Scopa's in Heaven right now cursing you for what you've done!" The darkest part of me understood all to well how he could have released the plague on Vegita-sei. But this...coming for the children...there was no excuse. None.

"Scopa's in Heaven because of those vicious, murdering monsters whose brats your protecting!" Zarbon choked out the words. "He was the best man, the kindest, most good soul either of us have even known and they repaid him for all his good deeds by tearing him to pieces! They-they-" He stopped talking, unable to go on. If he had, I would have ended up crying with him.

"Fine," Jeiyce said casually, pushing Zarbon aside gently. "But we will have them, Lady. By hook or by crook." The screen went dead.

And less than a minute later, the floor under us shuddered as a blast rocked through the complex. They had been pounding away at us with everything they had all day long and the shield had buffered us against even the smallest tremor. Bardock's face was pale and I knew he had realized the same thing.

"Bulma..." The voice in my head was so clear, I started. It was as though he was in the same room. A blast of pain and grief and horrible fear gusted into my mind and heart with the sound of his voice. "Bulma!"

"Ve-Vegita?" I said aloud. It was Vegita. He was alive and in horrible pain, all because I had been too weak to kill him this morning and spare him this. Bardock and Anyan were holding me up as I sagged.

"The shield around Med Center!" His voice cried desperately inside my mind. "The server! Jeiyce had a man inside Med Center, Bulma! He is seconds away from sabotaging the shield!"

And I just knew. I was a fool to not have known he would do it. "Oh Kami!" I nearly moaned. "It's Hiru! Bardock! Toma! Rikkuum! Vegita says Hiru's at the shield server! He-he's going to-!

Another shockwave rolled through Med Center, so strong the floors seemed to buckle under our feet. And oh Kami, the shield around Med Center flickered.

I don't remember running to my workshop, it's all a terrified blur. I only remember bursting in to the sight of Hiru with his hands around the shield server. He...he was two meters from my sons' incu-pods, and I screamed, tackling him.

Bardock pulled him out from under me, his hand around Hiru's throat, his face black with rage. "What did you do, Hiru?! What have you done?!"

"Virus..." Hiru weazed. "Into the server. They won't hurt Bulma-chan or her sons...Zarbon promised." His scarred ivory face was cold, his huge black eyes flat and full of cold hate. "To hell with the rest of you!"

I scrambled off the floor, pulling myself up to the terminal, my fingers flying on the keyboard. "Don't hurt him, Bardock!" I cried. Behind me, Hiru was spitting and cursing while Bardock held him firm. "I need to know what he did!"

Bardock turned to Nail. "Go into his head and get it, Nail! I know you can!"

Nail stared at him in horror, his face blanching to pale green. "I-I cannot do such a thing!"

"You told me your sole purpose in living is to protect Romayn!" Bardock ground out. "If you do not help us, Romayn will die!"

Nail swallowed, but he didn't hesitate-Bardock had known exactly what to say to force his hand. His face was twisted up in agony as he slowly took Hiru's face between both hands, while Hiru howled defiance...and then, Hiru simply howled. He screamed like a damned soul as Nail forced himself into his mind. It only took a few seconds. A few seconds that lasted an eternity, while Hiru wailed and wailed and...And then Nail let him go, sinking down to his knees, tears trailing down his face "I have it," he said in a broken whisper.

"Tell me," I said relentlessly. He began to feed me step by step details of what Hiru had done. I tore into the problem. I could fix it, I just needed time.

"How bad is it, girl?" Bardock's voice in my ear.

"I can stabilize it!" I said. "But I need a few minutes...oh gods, just a couple more-" Another thunderous crash as they hit Med Center again with everything they had, rocking me off my feet. The lights blinked and fluttered, the server monitor flicked off, then on, and my heart skipped that beat with it. The shield stats said that the shield was down to 50% and falling. "Oh gods, Vegita, I need more time! The babies..." I could hear Vegita somewhere in the background of my head, arguing with Zarbon, telling him Jeiyce had lied to him, that the Red Prince meant to kill us all.

"For Noira," Hiru was hissing, his face still so close to Bardock's I knew the Saiyan could feel his breath.

"Bulma..." Vegita's voice ringing through my mind like a dying song.

"For Duska." Hiru rasped.

Another deafening boom.

"We're not gonna make it," Toma cried from the sensor terminal beside mine.

I fed the repair code into the server, the fix to bring the shield back online fully, but it was too late. It needed time to propagate and we had no time left.

"Oh gods, Vegita!" I sobbed out loud. "We're not going to make it! I need more time to fix what he's done! Oh God, oh Kami...they're going to kill all the children!" My babies...they were going to come in and kill all my children!

I could suddenly feel the Vegita's heartbeat, strong and steady where before it had been thready, slowing as his body grew weaker with bloodloss, as the virus slowly wore down the last of his great strength. Something was building inside him like the pressure against a volcano's mantle before it blows.

"For my world destroyed by Saiyan soldiers," Hiru sobbed weakly. "Soldiers just like you, Bardock. For my people enslaved by yours...and for Nachti! Which one of you killed her, Bardock? Was it you or the Prince?"

"What?" Bardock asked harshly.

"When you and the Prince went to Kharda City to rescue Bulma-chan and the others you blasted half the city to rubble. You blew up the slave quarters where Nachti was sleeping. You murdered her!"

"I-" Bardock had gone pale, his hard face frozen.

"You killed her and half the other slaves in Kharda City and didn't even realize it," Hiru spat weakly, sagging in Bardock's grip. "Or care...or care! You are all evil! Evil to your rotten core!"

Vegita flared inside my mind, burning like an exploding sun, in power and grief and love. Oh gods, so much love.

"Vegita!" I whispered. "He-he's-"

"Super Saiyan," Bardock said breathlessly, his eyes unfocused, no longer trapped in the hate-filled gazed of the man he had called a friend. "He will save us in the hour of our greatest need." The faces of the other Saiyans in the room were full of wondering, half religious awe.

I could see the battle in my mind's eye, feel him smashing through their weapons, their soldiers, sweeping them all away like dust before an on-coming storm. The shield flickered once more, then returned to a healthy impenetrable blue. And Vegita...

"That's it!" I cried. "I did it! It's back online, it-" I felt him fall, his consciousness slipping away, spinning downward to crash in through leaves and petals and thorns, fading out of my mind like the last gasp of a dying flame. "0h gods, Vegita...Vegita!"

"...Bul...Beloved..." And he was gone.

"Vegita..." I sank down, sobbing his name over and over. I crawled to where Hiru lay gasping, where Bardock had simply let him fall. I reached down and touched his scarred face.

"How..." He choked out the words. "How can you grieve for him, Bulma-chan?"

"I don't know," I said softly. "Oh Hiru..." I couldn't think of anything else to say.

"Took poison," he murmured. "I...am I an evil man, Bulma-chan?" He was crying. "Will I go to Hell and not see...see Noira and Duska and Nachti? I tried to be good...like Scopa, like you...like Nachti. I tried so hard...not to hate."

He died in my arms. With me sobbing over him. With Bardock kneeling beside us, his face blank with shock as it struck home that he had killed Nachti and never known it, that he had given Hiru the last push he needed to bring him to a place where a good man could do the unthinkable. With Nail doubled over nearby, weeping silently, because he had just violated every cannon of decency among his people when he tore his way into another man's mind by force. With the deafening, thunderous silence of the dead world around us, pressing in on us like the weight on an avalanche.

Nail pulled himself up first, shuddering as he spoke. "Bulma-sama...he sabotaged the engine pods as well. We cannot launch."

It took all night to fix them, all of us laboring together in a dead horrible silence, all of us praying the fleet would not arrive to blow the planet's core before we could launch. Bardock asked me if the shield could survive having a planet breaking up under us. I told him I honestly didn't know. We fixed it. Then we all drifted away from each other, each in his or her private hell, to get whatever rest there was to be found while we waited for the engines to prep.

I sat alone in my workshop, listening to the distant low roar of the engines below gearing up, priming for launch. Again. I had improved on the prep time and we had a little more than three hours until they were ready. I could feel wisping impressions of fitful dreams from Vegita. He was still alive. He was dreaming of walking through the moors near Bardock's house. I was beside him, smiling and beautiful, Rom-kun and the dogs were running on ahead, laughing and barking...and...and I was carrying Karot-chan in my arms. My baby was laughing and kicking his little feet happily. Vegita was dreaming a wish, that he could take it all back, that he could make it all right...a beautiful, happy, hopeless dream that could never, never be...

Would I feel it when he died?

"Bulma-sama?" The deep voice, slow and hesitant, startled me.

Rikkuum was standing before me like a respectful mountain, his huge head lowered, his hands clasped before him a child asking a question in school.

"What is it, Rikkuum?" I asked gently. He had been sleeping earlier when Hiru had sabotaged the server. I had told him to go lie down and rest, but he still blamed himself I was sure. When he was awake, he never left my workshop, standing guard over my sons like a giant watchdog.

"Bulma-sama," he said. "I saw this plague once before, when I was in the service of my Lord Frieza of Tsiru-sei. All his folk died too."

"I know," I said.

"Bulma-sama," he went on. "I am a fool to have forgotten this, but I will tell you now. My Lord Frieza did not die of the plague. Nor did many of his folk, as many as a hundred, I think. The Tsiru-jin science men said it was because their bodies were so strong-strong enough to survive the plague."

"What happened to your Lord, then?" I asked, feeling suddenly cold all over.

"He-he woke and found he had no more fighting power. The disease had killed it. He and all those who survived the plague slew themselves rather than live on as weaklings. Bulma-sama, Vegita-ouji is strong! As strong as Lord Frieza was now. He will not die of the plague, and-and we must not let them take him alive, my Lady!"

I rose, shaking, and met his eyes. "I'll go out and find him," I said. "You stay here. You must guard the little Saiyan on Ouji, Rikkuum. I will find the...the King. I will see to him."

I went out into the stillness of early dawn. The air smelled fresh and cool, the first hints of autumn hanging in the chill morning breeze. The sun was rising on Vegita-sei's last day. Jeiyce's reinforcements would arrive any moment now. And when the fleet arrived, all this, everything, would be so much dust floating in black void of space. My home in Turrasht, the stone bier where Karot-chan and Raditz had burned, the endless, flowering fields that surrounded Bardock's house, our mountain cave in the northern crags, and the villa where I built a living beautiful garden in the cold stony soil as I slowly turned my prison into my home...as I slowly enchanted the monster who guarded my cell into a handsome prince.

I went straight to the villa, almost too blind with pain to see well enough to guide the flyer. There's no remedy for this sort of pain, no drug of healing touch. The dragon woke as I landed behind the house and sank her speared talons a little deeper into my mind, tearing with slow malicious sadism at what little was still whole, still sane.

I found him dying in my rose garden, his bright blood mingled with the crushed red petals beneath his body. He was half conscious, breathing shallowly, his strong, strong body still fighting the virus that was trying to tear him apart from the inside.

But, it wasn't. It hadn't. And oh gods, as I knelt beside him, I saw that he was bathed in a river of blood-beaded sweat, shivering uncontrollably as his fever broke. Rikkuum had been right. Vegita was too strong to die from the plague, though he would surely die from blood loss if he didn't receive several units of plasma soon.

He opened his eyes.

_Beloved..._ The word was like a song of love echoing through the crumbling chambers of my mind, a note of sharp discord against Karot-chan's lullaby and the dragon's howls. She was free now, she would never be chained again, and though she had been slept most of the last few weeks, only waking when I thought or dreamed of Vegita, her claws were always there, always embedded deep in the smashed wreck of my mind. She was content to take her time ripping up the last bits of my sanity. I had held her down with the force of my will to do what must be done, to save the children. But the time was fast approaching when we would be away, when need would no longer give me the strength to reign her. I took his head and lay it in my lap. I leaned down and kissed his bloody lips, wondering if I would go into the quiet, dark waters of nothing when she was finished with me, or if I would spend all that remained of my life gibbering in horror, locked in a revolving mirrored maze where all the nightmares of my life were reflected back at me.

He tried to move his mouth, trying to frame words.

_Med Center?_

"The shield is in place," I smiled down at him sadly. "You did it, Vegita...you saved us. Your people will live on. Because of you. Listen, Vegita. I don't have much time. I have a vaccine. For all the children, for Bardock and his people, for Articha and Turna and all the girls on their ships if we can find them before they become exposed. But it will only work if you haven't already contracted it. It can't help you..." I couldn't help any of them, and just as I had stood by and watched Chikyuu die, unable to lift a hand to stop it, I had watched this world die and been equally helpless to prevent it. I held him a little closer, caressing his face, forcing the dragon down one last time.

"Bulma, go..." I don't know if he spoke the words, or if I heard them in my mind. "Do not watch me die..."

There was one thing I could give him, one thing that would ease his passing into whatever lay in store for him beyond Enma's judgment.

"I had to tell you," I said gently. "I had to let you know..."

I meant to open up my mind just enough to let him see my secret, to let him see Trunks sleeping in his incubator, growing stronger and more beautiful every day, but he pushed into the link and he saw...he saw everything. The dragon had bashed my wavering barrier to pieces and all my secrets, all of them, lay open and bare for Vegita to see. To see that I had been the Mastertech, the author of the enemy's most deadly weapons, which had tipped the balance in Jeiyce's favor at every turn. To see that he had pushed me into their arms, given me no other place to run, no other recourse...to see through my eyes all he had done, all I had held back from him even while I gave him my heart and my self on our wedding night. I felt the blow hit him like the downward plunge of a blade into his heart, destroying him, taking away all his comfort as he lay dying.

_No..._

I tried to block it, oh gods believe me, I tried. But the dragon reared up and screamed her triumph, lashing through his grief, pouring all her hate, her loathing, her endless, undying rage, into his mind. And I felt him crumble beneath the onslaught, not raising a word, a thought, a wisp of denial in his own defense. He lay there and took it all, all the blame that was his...and more. I could see him working his way back, tracing the guilt for setting the destruction of his whole world, of his entire race, in motion, and laying it squarely on his own shoulders.

I could hear his thoughts, too far gone in agony and absolute despair, as though he spoke them in my ear. _If not for me, she would never have wrought, unknowingly, the engines of my world's destruction. An entire empire felled in the space of a day. Dead by the hand of Jeiyce of Maiyosh, dead by the hand of Zarbon of Rashia-sei, dead by the hand of Bulma of Chikyuu...and dead by the hand of Vegita, Saiyan no Ouji._

"Oh Kami..." I moaned. "I didn't mean for you to see that!" I leaned down, brushing away his tears. His whole body wracking with silent sobs. "It's not your fault! It's not! I did it! I was stupid and gullible. I didn't know what they would do with the things I made...and I trusted Zarbon. I only wanted the Rebels to be able to defend themselves...to be able to hide their families with the camo-shields." I whimpered and clenched my teeth with effort, trying to keep the lullaby echoing through my head down to a low roar, grabbing the dragon with one last burst of strength and shoving her down. "I'll save the children, Vegita. The shield bubble around Med Center can withstand even the quantum stresses of hyper light speed. I have two carrier engines built into the foundations, on the focal point of the shield. In one hour, I'm going to blast Med Center off and drive it like a ship to a new world. Somewhere no one will find us. I didn't mean for my work to be used the way Jeiyce used it, Vegita. But I have cho-gugol to all of your people because of it. And I won't let them down. But none of this is what I came to tell you."

He saw what I had come to tell him, Trunks sleeping, alive and dreaming whatever sweet dreams come to us before birth, when we have no memory, no guilt, no pain.

_Our son..._

And somehow...somehow he managed to smile.

The midnight dragon rose, razor-edged wings unfurling, and I saw her, finally, completely, for the first time. I had never looked at her, always turned away in horror and disgust at everything she was. I saw her. She was a monster made of hate, born of my pain and loss. She wasn't some hideous demon risen up out of Hell to plague me. She was...she was...

She was me.

And I suddenly knew how to be free of her. How I could keep on living and perhaps achieve a measure of sanity in time. All I had to do was...was let her out into the light of day. Let her have her way. Just once.

I leaned down and stroked his face, twisted in an agony that had nothing to do with his wounds, nothing to do with the plague. I heard my voice speaking gently, but it was _her_, the dragon, speaking through me. "Do you really think I would let you kill another child of mine, Vegita?"

He shuddered in my arms, sobbing weakly, as the blast of icy hate, of betrayal, of screaming rage, struck him full force. And I could see that he knew, had seen in my mind, that I was mad, lost, broken and shattered beyond repair-and that the last blow, the one that had broken me, had been his command to destroy the life growing inside me, to kill another son.

_I chose you, Bulma!_ His anguished voice rippled through me. _You above the boy...you above...above everything!_

"There's always another option," We said softly, the dragon and I, implacable as admantium steel. "I put him in an incu-pod and let you think I'd aborted him. I'll tell him when he's older how his father was brave and strong...how he died to save his people. He's going to be beautiful, Vegita. All the good in you and me and none of the bad. I wanted you to know about him. I wanted you to know that something of you will go on. That it won't be as though you never lived." We both smiled down at him, Bulma who loved him more than her own life and Bulma the midnight dragon of hate and merciless vengeance. "Your fever's broken. The virus...if you're strong enough, you can survive it. At a price. The cerebral swelling and hemorrhaging ruptures and destroys the centers of your brain where your power resides. Your Ki. If I gave you enough blood, you would survive...but you'd live the rest of your life powerless."

"Bulma..." He whispered, raw and broken. "I will live...take me…I will live. I do not care about-about-" He tripped over the words, over the very thought of living without Ki, a cripple and a weakling. Then he set his jaw. _I learned late_, his voice said in my mind, _that the greatest measure of a King's strength does not lie in his fighting power. Bear me to Med Center. I will live to lead my people. I will live to be yours, woman, if it can ever be made right again! Take me back..._

"No." I sighed. I let her speak, let her take her vengeance. I understood, too late to save myself, too late to keep her from turning inward and destroying me, that his command to abort our child had only finished what the sin of loving the man who killed my baby and enslaved me had set in motion. It was loving him that had driven me mad in the end. And the only way to be free...the only way out was to be rid of him and my love for him. I eased his head down onto the bed of thorns and blood red petals, and stood above him, gazing down at his upturned, agonized face. "I can't love you anymore, Vegita. I can't have you in my heart and my head. It's killing me. I finally realized that when you told me to kill our baby. It's killing me...And I have to live for Rom-kun and our son and all the other children. I love you...I'll always love you." I gave one tiny little despairing sob, but for some reason the tears wouldn't come. "So, I have to let you die." I was silent for moment, turning my eyes away from his face, tearing my mind away from the clear, pure, selfless love I felt pouring out of his soul even now. I had to leave him. I had to.

My flowers were all blown to hell, I saw, the garden blasted apart by the force of his fall. And finally, I began to cry softly. "All my pretty flowers...I'll make them grow again. I always do." His hand was clutching at the hem of my dress, grasping it like a drowning man holding a raft. I reached down and pulled it gently from his hand.

"...love you...forever..." He whispered. Even now, as I was leaving him to die, there was no anger, no pleas for mercy, no word defending himself. He was going to die in agony, in despair, in grief for me and all that might have been, and he would die believing he had gotten exactly what was coming to him.

I bent down and kissed him one last time, a sweet kiss to take into whatever fate had in store for him beyond this life. "I love you, Vegita," I said. "I love you..." I pulled away from him, and stumbled away, blind with tears, the sound of his weak, broken sobs growing fainter with each step I took.

I made it around to the front of the house before I fell to my knees, the sound of Karot-chan's lullaby like thunder in my ears. I raise my head, and looked down on the still, silent, dead Capital. Nothing moved there. Nothing lived. Nothing.

And the dragon died inside me like...like a gust of spring wind tugging at my hair. There was no roar, no clawing crescendo of pain, no lighting. She died, taking all the black poison of her hate with her, her work finished, her vengeance achieved. And now...now there was nothing left but the mad woman who had once been Bulma of Chikyuu.

I stood, and straightened my shoulders, and looked down from our hilltop on the still graveyard that had been the Capital of an Empire. I stood there for along time, breathing in the cool morning air, the scent of late summer hellda blossoms and moonflowers, of blackwood resin and the coppery smell of the soil beneath my feet. How many more hours would this world stand? I didn't know. How much longer could I hold onto the last tattered thread of my sanity? Not long.

One more thing to do. One last task and I could rest.

I took the flyer and went down into the city. There were bodies everywhere, to many to do justice to in a month. So, I chose one. He was seven, maybe eight years old. Too old to go into cloister, but still very much a little boy, though he ha very likely been a seasoned warrior. He was…he was about the age Karot-chan would be now. If he'd lived. He was heavier than he looked, dense of bone and muscle like all his race. But somehow, I lifted him my flyer and launched up through the reddish shafts of morning sunlight, thick and brilliant with the ash and earth yesterday's battle had hurled into the sky. I set down on the highest peek on Vegita-sei, a sheer column of granite, jutting into the sky like a blade, chiseled to a pylon by some long dead ocean eons ago. It had always been a symbol of strength to Vegita-sei, to the northern tribes in particular, because it had withstood the impact of the meteoric cataclysm five millennia ago.

Mount Cho-tal.

It took all the strength I had to heave the boy onto the stone bier. I should have piled blackwood branches around him. I should have lit the pyre with my own ki. I didn't have either of those things, so I used flyer fuel and a flare. The idea was that a hero of Vegita-sei should have his ashes scattered over the entire face of the planet from this summit, to become part of every acre of the world he had given his life for. It was the best I could do for him. It was the best I could do for all of them.

I stood and watched the flames lick upward, dry-eyed, all my grief turned inward, with no more expression on my face than this boy's father or squad brothers would have shown had they been alive to lay him to rest. I couldn't let myself cry. Not over the pyre of Vegita's entire world. I couldn't dishonor the ashes of a warrior race with tears.

There was no sound, no sense of anyone else within a thousand miles. I don't know how long he stood behind me before he spoke. He must have seen the smoke from wherever Vegita's last, greatest volley of power had thrown him. I only have negligible ki, but at some point, I felt him standing just a few feet behind me. And somehow, I knew who stood alone with me before the child's funeral pyre, even before he stepped forward the stand beside me, watching the blaze impassively. His white and crimson armor was charred and melted in places. His long pale warrior's braid had been burned and what remained of his hair stood on end around his battered, soot-blackened face, framing his handsome elfin features in a wild, almost Saiyan flare of tangled ivory.

"All this," I said, not turning to look at him. "It didn't bring them back, did it?"

"No," he said softly. "But they have their justice now." Jeiyce of Maiyosh turned to face me, surveying me with tired wonder. "Lady…how can you grieve or them?"

"I love some of them," I told him in a faint whisper. "Some of them I hated, but…but…" I trailed off. I knew I could never make him understand and it was really too late to try.

"Where is Vegita?" He asked after a moment's silence.

"Dead," I lied softly. It was only half a lie.

"You killed him." It wasn't a question.

"I couldn't let you take him alive again," I sighed. "No one deserves what you would have done to him. And I…" I turned to look him in the face. It felt so strange. There was so much between us and we'd never even met. "You're angry because you didn't get to defeat him. Because he died on his own terms, at the hands of someone he loved, the way a Saiyan warrior should. He died knowing he'd saved his people. I'll tell you how you can still defeat him if you want to know."

"Tell me, Lady," he said. His face was so strange, caught somewhere between fury and pity.

"Find a beautiful world and a kind beautiful girl. Marry her and have another son. Live on that world with your new family and love them and be happy. If you do this, you will have beaten Vegita. Because he'll never get to see Rom-kun learn to fly, or our new baby take his first steps, or see what kind of men they'll grow into. And if you do this, you'll save your soul, Prince of Maiyosh. You're still alive…but you're already in Hell. Real damnation is loving your hate for those who've hurt you more than you love any other person."

He didn't even consider the road I'd suggested. He was too far gone. He searched my face with those black, haunted, hate-ravaged eyes. "I cannot stop what I have set in motion. I must see it through to the bitter, bloody end." But he slowly raised one black-gloved hand and touched my cheek gently. "I came here to kill you for your treachery against the Rebellion, Bulma of Chikyuu. But you are not a traitor, are you? Stolen from your dead world and given into slavery to that butcher Raditz, taken from him to be used by an even crueler beast, the one thing in your life you truly loved murdered before our eyes. I have had unending nightmares since the day Corsaris fell, of how…of how terrible the last hour of their lives must have been-Jula's and Jehan's. But they were far more fortunate than you. I will let Zarbon have his way. I will take you to him and he will care for you. You are no traitor, Lady. They have made you mad."

"I know," I said in a breathless little whisper. "But it could have been worse." I fixed him with a cold stare that was much more lucid than I felt. "I could have ended up like you." He didn't reply. I don't think he disagreed with me. "I can't go with you," I said. "And I can't die. I have to take care of the children. I'm taking them somewhere beautiful. I'll raise them, like I did Rom-kun. I'll raise them to be good people. I have to be there for them, and for my sons."

"Vegita's sons…" Jeiyce said softly. He closed his eyes, his entire body beginning to tremble all over. The gentle hand on my cheek seized me behind the neck, and he opened his eyes again. They were full of flat hate and cold purpose. He was as mad as I was. I wondered if he realized it. "Vegita's sons will not live when my Jehan is dead," he ground out. "The children of Vegita-sei will not live when the thousands upon thousands of worlds their fathers destroyed are dust." His hand tightened painfully on my neck. "Tell me, Lady. How do we get through your shield? Tell me!"

"No," I said calmly.

"By hook or by crook, lovey," he hissed harshly. "You will tell me freely, or I'll give you to Dodoria. If he can't pursuade you to show us the way through your shield before Med Center launches, I will let him wring their destination from you at his leisure."

"Jeiyce," I said almost mockingly. "There's not enough of me left to torture."

"We'll see," he said.

A burning blue streak caught the fist Jeiyce was raising to strike me down and punched him full in the face. The Red Prince flew backwards, nearly skidding off the sheer edge of the mountaintop before he caught himself. He cartwheeled and landed unsteadily before Zarbon, who was now standing between Jeiyce and myself.

"You lying bastard!" Zarbon wheezed. "You said she'd be left alone!"

"She knows the way through the shield, boyo," Jeiyce said coldly. "She knows where they'll go if they make it off Vegita-sei." He wiped the blood from his face and spat red. "One more sacrifice, Zarbon. One more draught of innocent blood on our hands, and we'll have put paid to the last of the monkeys. They'll never come back to haunt us again."

"My Prince," Zarbon said too softly. "Look at her. _Look_ at her! She will sink into herself and never return if you put her to the question. Gods of mercy, Jeiyce, leave her be!"

Jeiyce blurred forward and hurled a blast as he came. I felt it strike home, felt Zarbon stagger back against me. And Zarbon…he leveled the ki-killer pistol in his hand at Jeiyce and shot him at pointblank range. Zarbon buckled and fell into me, taking us both to the ground. I don't know what happened to Jeiyce. He must have been knocked over the edge. After taking a solid hit from a ki-killer in the chest, he probably hit the ground very hard. Without his ki-shield to break his fall.

I sat up, shifting Zarbon around in my arms. I sighed, a heart-broken, pitiful sound, even to my own ears, when I saw the mess Jeiyce had made of his chest.

"Zarbon…poor Zarbon…" I didn't know what else to say.

"Shh, love," he said. "I'm…it's my fault. All mine." He smiled up at me, bluish blood pooled on his lips. "I've betrayed everybody…Scopa…my Scopa most of all."

"You'll see him soon," I whispered.

"No." His mouth twisted. "Too many heaths on my head…Listen! There's a trap just past the orbit of the fifth planet…force field. Don't go to hyper light speed until you're past it."

"Okay," I said, stroking his face. Even covered with dust, tears, and his own blood, he was still beautiful. I bent down and kissed him softly. "Are you sorry, Zarbon? For all those deaths on your head?"

"Yes…yes." His voice was fading, just dropping away with his failing breath.

"Then give Scopa my love," I said softly. And he died like a child heaved a last tired sigh before sleep.

I came back to Med Center. Back to my sons. Bardock, Nail and Rikkuum all greeted me at the shield door, their faces haggard and angry. I'd 'locked' them in as I left, set the shield config to only recognize my ki signature from the outside. I walked past them, feeling distant and calm…peaceful. My dragon was dead, and though she tore me asunder from the inside, it was good, so good, to have her gone.

"Zarbon's dead," I told them softly. "He died to save me from Jeiyce. I think he killed him."

"Poor fellow," Nail murmured.

Bardock turned on his with a growl like a rabid tiger. "Poor fellow?! He slit the throat of my entire race while they slept, you fool! He-"

"He told me there's a trap at the fifth moon," I broke in over his anguished rage. "We can't go to hyper light until we break through the force field bubble there."

"You believe him?" Bardock hissed.

"He warned me because it's what Scopa would have wanted." I stepped forward, falling into his broad chest, this father who had killed my Poppa…and somehow taken his place. His arms looped around me, catching me as I began to sink down.

"Bulma…"

"Vegita's gone…" I sighed.

"Rikkuum, wait!" I heard Nail cry.

"Let the man go!" Bardock's tired voice rumbled against my body. "He served his Prince as faithfully as any Saiyan warrior. Let him die standing guard over his master's body."

I don't remember launching. I guess they did it without me. Or maybe I was just on autopilot. I remember being held in the solid gentle shelter of Bardock's arms, and feeling Nail's power touching me here, then there, probing the outer edges of my consciousness to see how bad the damage was.

"Vegita…" I sobbed faintly. "I left him…"

And the image of my beloved lying there in my rose garden, his eyes streaming with blood and tears as I destroyed him, then left him to die drifted through the healing link into Nail's mind. He turned me slowly in Bardock's arms. He gazed down into my blanched face, his eyes widening in horror and pity as he saw the truth in my memory. "He survived the plague? He would have lived without a scrap of fighting power, but he would have lived! And…and you left him to die! After he saved-"

"If that is so, she did the boy a kindness!" Bardock said harshly. "He will die like a hero out of legends. Do you really think he could have lived crippled and maimed?!"

Bardock carried me to my office workshop, to my babies. He lay me down on my little bed beside the incu-pods. "Do you wish to die, daughter?" He asked me softly.

He was offering to do for me what he wasn't sure I could do for myself.

"Yes," I said. I could tell him the truth and he'd understand. "But I can't. I have to take care of my sons, I have to take care of Rom-kun and Trunks. The god told me…" It was so hard to talk now. "We have to get to Namek-sei."

He ran one hard, callused hand through my hair, smoothing it back, out of my face. "Were you and he moonbound?"

"He said we went too deep in the marriage bond because the moon was so near," I said sleepily. "Not moonbound, but the closest thing to it."

"When he dies, the bond may take you with him," he said, a soft rumble.

"Okay," I said. I needed to live, but…it would be nice to rest, the sleep in death. I went to sleep with him sitting beside me, but I woke about an hour later. He had lain down beside me and wrapped me in his arms. He was snoring, deep in the sleep of the utterly exhausted. I pushed his arm off of me and rose, kissing the glass that separated me from my sons. Rom-kun and…and Trunks…little King Trunks, Saiyan no Ou. Gods, I wish I could hold him, just once. But I can't wait.

This is it. This is all I've got left. I'm finished, used up. I've got no more strength left. I'm going to lie back down in Bardock's arms, like when I was little and crawled into my parents' bed after a nightmare…a hundred million years ago. I'm going to sink into that deep quiet, peaceful water of nothing and rest.

Goodnight.

And there was a deafening silence. He pressed the data disc's forward search, scanning ahead for something, anything, his hands shaking, his teeth clenched. He wanted to-the disc stopped after ten hours of silence. She…she must have left the recorder on. He hit play.

"Bulma-san," Nail's voice, soft but growing more worried, more anxious, as he continued to repeat her name. As she did not respond. The light fall of his footsteps leaving, and silence.

Booted heels clanging on the deck floor. "I left her to sleep herself out," Bardock's voice said hollowly.

"It's been a full day," Nail murmured. "She is awake, Captain. But…she is not with us."

"The hell she isn't!" Bardock snapped. "She's sitting right in front of you, Namek! Go into her head and…find her!"

"I cannot," was the soft reply. "She has withdrawn so far into the labyrinth of her own mind I cannot find her. I…" A tired grieving sigh. "I have failed her. Failed my mission and my god. I knew this was coming. I offered her a remedy, one that would have spared her this and washed away much of her pain. She would not allow it."

"What did you offer to do?" Bardock grunted. "Wipe away her memories of the last ten years?"

"No…not exactly," Nail said. "But I could have dimmed some of them. I could have blurred or taken away completely the horrors of her first days as the Prince's slave. I could have wiped away the memory of her son dying before her eyes. Those two things would have been enough to save her mind, I think. She would still have known these things had happened, but she would have had little or no memory of them. She told me…she said it would change her. That our experiences make us into who we are, and loosing those memories would have made her into a different person. She told me she believed that trying to bury those memories herself, to cage and lock them away after the Prince returned from Avaris so changed, had distilled her hatred into a living thing with a will of its own."

"Would it help her now?"

"I believe now that she was right to refuse my 'quick fix', as she called it. Memory can never be erased, only locked away or blurred. And things such as she had seen and suffered, memories such as that…they will find a way into the light of day, one way or another. But…"

"But?" Bardock prodded.

"I have another idea," Nail said. "Let us wake your son."

"Yes," Bardock said after a moment's silence. "Yes!"

Vegita skimmed the disc ahead again, forward to the next piece of audio data.

And listened to the sound of Romayn's voice, pleading, weeping, for her to wake. It was the most piteous sound he had ever imagined possible, and it went on and on, until Bardock broke in with a hoarse growl and lifted the boy up.

"Come, boy," he said bleakly.

"No!" Romayn said, his voice beginning to rise. "No! Momma! Wake up, Momma! Wake up! Wake up!"

Bardock grunted in sudden, surprised pain and there was a noise of something small hitting the floor, and a scuffle. Romayn had bitten him. "Stop it, boy! I'm taking you away to-"

"Don't you hurt her, Poppa!" The boy said clearly.

Silence…then. "I mean to help her, Romayn."

"No," Romayn said flatly. "Killing her won't help her. Momma's sick and hurt bad, but she'll come back if you let her. I know it!"

Bardock didn't reply for a long moment. "Who is it that knows, boy? Romayn or Kakarott?"

"Me," the boy said.

The soft sound of rustling fabric, and the boy cried out in joy. "Momma! Momma!"

"If she can move to hold him, she is not lost to us," Nail said. "In any case, I will trust the boy's word that she can recover."

"I will trust him," Bardock agreed shakily.

"We should move her. To somewhere other than this workshop. We can move the little one's incubator as well." The faint sweep of Bardock hefting her into

his arms.

And silence.

And more silence.

_**Vegita: Deep Space**_

Ki lent strength to bone and sinew and muscle. But even without it, he was still more than a match for the Chikyuu-jin warriors. Vegita grinned viciously as he drove a fist into the dark-haired warrior's gut, sneering at the way the man let the pain show so readily. Yamcha was a passable warrior, physically stronger than most third class Saiyan soldiers. But there was an...an absence of will to fight in the man. In both the Chikyuu senshi. Yamcha and his squad brother Krillan had trained for almost a decade against the threat of another purge, had pushed themselves past the limits of their kind and beyond. They fought with all the might the gods had seen fit to give them, but there was no inherent love of battle for it own sake in them. Only purpose. Only need. And in this, Bulma's kith and kin bore an unnerving resemblance to the Maiyosh-jin, who have never been a warrior race until a Saiyan purge had...changed them. The Chikyuu senshi lived in that mental place Vegita had only found as he fought Jeiyce and his men for the lives of Bulma and all the children in Med Center-a place of need to do the impossible. They lived in that place constantly. Or Yamcha did. Krillan had some love of the fight for its own sake, but there was a quiet stillness in the little man that was no less unfathomable.

The dark Chikyuu-jin hit the plated metal of the ship's training room floor with a thud, and Vegita nodded to Coran, who stood watching avidly. Yamcha had let himself be defeated, without cheating. Without using his ki, in other words. The man had been, from the first, uncompromisingly hostile to Vegita, though he seemed to have warmed up to Articha's sons and Rikkuum a great deal during the months Vegita had lain in a coma. But despite his unswerving dislike of Vegita, he did not break his honor.

All the Chikyuu-jin had been relieved to learn of the plague's 'side-effect', a fact Rikkuum had blurted out at some point. But the knowledge had made all the folk who had watched the Saiyan's with unbridled distrust and fear at first able to bear their presence easier.

Yamcha stood gingerly and grinned at him, a brief flash of white teeth. It was not a friendly smile. It had taken Vegita longer than it should have to realize why this man had befriended Rikkuum and Articha's son, and yet remained overtly hostile to Vegita. _Yamcha...I wish had been better to him,_ his woman's voice echoed softly, regretfully, in his mind.

"I am done here," Vegita said shortly, nodding for Coran and Krillan to take the center if they wished. "I must speak with Briefs-san."

"Really?" Yamcha said, eyeing him. "You wouldn't be trying to convince the elders' council to let you go down on the barter party when we reach Soussa, would you?"

It had been six months since they had left Dodoria and his men to rot on Chikyuu. The Chikyuu-jin had loaded all they had in the way of food stores, all the encapsulated wealth of rations from Briefs' bunker. The stores of Briefs' larder had been deep, enough to feed nearly eleven thousand mouths for a decade-but they had not been bottomless. Water was no problem. Chikyuu was a water-logged world, and Briefs' capsules had allowed his people to take enough water for a hundred years if need be. But they were fast running out of food.

So, there was no choice. They must stop and resupply. Soussa was a good choice. It was sparsely populated, an edge of the Empire garrison world. The natives had no fighting power to speak of and no ties to the Rebels. They were an agricultural, hunter-gatherer culture who lived almost exclusively on the planet's southern continent. The garrison had been located on the northern continent. The Imperial garrison logs on the ship's computer said that the natives had dutifully bowed head to their Saiyan masters on those rare occasions when they crossed paths, and nothing else. It was not possible that there was no one from the New Alliance dwelling on Soussa at this moment, Vegita thought blackly. Someone must have arrived to release Soussa's portion of the plague. The long range sensors said the Saiyan garrison was not deserted. Which meant that some enterprising veteran of the Rebellion had taken up residence there. But regardless, Soussa was the best choice in a galaxy of poor choices.

"I am going," Vegita said bluntly, swallowing the reflexive rush of rage, that this fool should think that he must answer to him. "Your people do not know their way around any society other than their own."

"You said all this at round table last week," Yamcha said impatiently. "Satan's faction didn't listen."

"Then I will say it again tonight," Vegita said flatly. He nodded curtly for Coran and Krillan to take the next bout if they wished and left quickly before he lost his already tenuous hold on his temper. These people, his woman's entire race, would tax the patience of an Inlu-jin Sage. He hit the lift control on the training room shield door and nearly stepped on the tiny figure who was sitting just outside the door patiently. He glared down at the small, stubborn face under a mop of unbrushed black hair, and fought down a grin. Satan's cub.

"Beat it, kid," Yamcha said casually as he edged past Vegita through the arched of the door. "Your Poppa's going to give us hell again if he catches you here."

"Not til you show me how," she said flatly, staring up at the darker Chikyuu-jin warrior with angry resolve.

"Listen," Yamcha stopped, sighing, regarding the girl with a weary, patronizing half grin. "I can't teach you while we're on the ship. And even if we weren't in deep space, the chances are one in a million that you'd be able to-"

"Teach me to fly, you big dumbass!" She said stridently.

Behind him, Krillan and Coran were choking with suppressed laughter. The girl came every day to their training sessions, dogged Yamcha's heels as he left, and always ended up hurling curses at man when he refused to comply with her demand.

She perhaps two years older than Romayn, and very…very Saiyan in her moods and interests. Vegita found it difficult to associate this child with her fool of a father, would in fact have been unsurprised if someone told him the brats's late mother had been less than faithful to the hairy blowhard in the months before her cub's conception.

"You know," Krillan said, ginning openly now. "If you just gave her a few lessons, Yamcha-"

"If I just give her a few lessons," Yamcha said impatiently. "I'll have to listen to her father bitch at me for the next year about how _he's_ the only one who'll be training his little girl and not some 'flying, showy charlatan' like me. And she's not going to be able to learn to fly if I give her a hundred lessons."

"Rikkuum-san said I could," the brat said softly.

Vegita frowned and knelt down, eye-level with her. "What did Rikkuum say, girl?"

She met his eyes with a clear, open gaze that held no fear. All of the other Chikyuu-jin cubs ran in terror at the sight of his tail. "Rikkuum-san was over in our quarter of the ship two days ago," she said. "I asked him and he told me I'm more than strong enough to fly. He said I can learn to make ki blasts and everything if someone just teaches me how. He did a ki poten…potetil…um…" She frowned, trying to remember the word.

"A ki potential test?" Vegita murmured.

She nodded happily. "That was it. And he said I'm more than strong enough and can learn how to fly fine, and he's way stronger than you, Yamcha-san, so nyah!" She stuck her tongue out at the Chikyuu senshi.

Yamcha took a deep breath, glowering down at the girl, angry, but helpless to show it without risking the embarrassing dishonor of being drawn into a name-calling fight with a child. "I'm going to take a shower," he grunted and left quickly.

Vegita stood and strode away in the opposite direction, toward his own quarters to clean up before the round table convened. He had gone less than fifty yards when he heard the light tread of the girl's small boots behind him. He turned, noticing with an internal smile how she did not flinch at the cold, hard glare he offered her.

"I am not a teacher, girl. If Rikkuum took the time to test you, let him train you as well. He has a great deal of experience teaching brats the art of war."

"I can't!" She said angrily, almost plaintively. "Poppa found out and kicked him out of our commons areas. Poppa told him he can't come back ever and not to talk to me ever again. I wanna learn, Vegita-san! Poppa taught me all he knows, but he won't let me learn from anybody else. It's not fair!" She stamped her little foot. It was a poor expression for all the will to fight, the desperate need to grow stronger, raging inside her small body. Vegita felt a sickened disgust for her idiot sire bloom inside him at the thought of any creature with so much love of battle being needlessly hamstrung from her full potential.

She must have seen the softening of his mood in his face, because she stepped forward eagerly. "I can pay you," she said.

"What can you pay, girl?" He said with a smirk.

"My dog Gekko has a litter of five new puppies," she said proudly. "If you show me how to fly, you can have one. But they have to grow some more first before they're weaned. They still have their eyes closed right now. Do you like dogs?"

"Yes," Vegita said quietly. He did not fear Satan's blustering wrath. If the man annoyed him overmuch, he would toss him through a bulkhead. And…he did not have any pressing engagements, did he? "Yamcha is right in that it is better to have open sky when learning to fly. I will teach you how to fly. But only after we have made planetfall on what will be the Chikyuu-jin's new home. That is my offer."

She studied him, swallowing grateful tears. But just as quickly, she forced them away, and regarded him with a stoic, expressionless face. He realized with a start that she was consciously mimicking his blank visage. Then she bowed, low, in the formal fashion of her people. Her little hear popped up, her dark eyes on his with a kind of grateful adulation that made him intensely uncomfortable.

"Arigato…sensei." She turned and ran.

They came in so many types, dispositions, and colors, these Chikyuu-jin, he mused thoughtfully. It was amazing to find so much variety within one species. And more amazing to find one such as Satan's cub, who might have passed for a Saiyan brat in every way, save for want of a tail. He shoved these thoughts aside. He must think, he told himself as he showered in the barracks quarters he shared with Articha's sons and Rikkuum. He did not have the strength to compel these idealistic, suicidally trusting Chikyuu-jin to obey, so he must be clever and persuasive. He must make them listen and understand that they would be seen as a wondrous bounty of free slave labor by most of the space-faring races that dominated the sectors of space that had once been the Saiyan Empire. He stepped out of the shower, willing calm, willing his mind to focus on his purpose tonight. If he lost his temper…they would only see their own fear of him and not hear his words. He dressed mechanically in the Chikyuu-jin garb he, Coran and Okuda had taken to wearing in lieu of armor. It was soft and afforded no protection whatsoever, and it made him feel naked for want of the familiar black rubber of a battlesuit and the comforting weight of steel and ardantium armor. But it made Bulma's people less edgy in his presence within the often claustrophobic confines of the rusting, out-of-date, Maiyosh-jin troop carrier that was home to all of them at present. He stared into the mirror at the somber-faced stranger who had once been Prince of the greatest Empire the galaxy had known, who had once been proud and strong and full of hope for all the unnumbered tomorrows he would share with his woman at his side, with Romayn, who would grow stronger every day, who he would set beside his heir to be the strong right arm of the Empire when he came to manhood…

He closed his eyes, pushing their faces away. If he thought too deeply or too long on the story, her story, if he allowed himself to dream of all that might have been he would…he would fall to pieces.

So, he would move forward, and fight his way through each day with a tiny spar of hope clasped to his breast like a life rope. Hope that he would find her. That he would bring her this unlooked-for gift of family and friends long dead to her. Hope that it was not too late to save her, to draw her out of that silent prison of madness.

Sometimes, he thought, as he made his way to the ship's central mess hall which Briefs and the other Chikyuu-jin elders commandeered one night a week to hold open council, sometimes he dreamed that he had touched the faint distant wisps of her thoughts. He would see images through the filter of her eyes, the faces of Bardock, of Romayn, and…he would see her smiling, sane and whole, as she rocked their son in her arms, as she sang that silly song about the mockingbird Romayn favored so much. But these were fantasies, he knew. Dreams were more cruel than a torturer's whip sometimes. And sweet, impossible dreams were the cruelest.

He strode into the mess hall, back straight, head high, every gesture calculated to convey royalty, authority. The Chikyuu-jin elders eyed him warily, and the common folk, pressed in around the circular council table and through the doors to overflowing, murmured among themselves.

"Vegita," Briefs said in his friendly way, his mild scholar's face giving away nothing, which meant a great deal was about to be decided. "We were just about to begin deciding who will go planetside with the barter party tomorrow."

"I will go," Vegita said, raising his voice a bit so that it carried throughout the hall. Yamcha was staring at him, expressionless as a son of Vegita-sei, from where he stood behind Briefs' chair, sandwiched between Krillan and Coran. Rikkuum loomed on Krillan's other side, looking uncomfortable and confused. Okuda was back a ways, watching from where he stood surrounded by several young women.

Heh. He did nothing to encourage this, but according to Coran, they hounded his silent younger brother night and day and fought among themselves like dire cats for a place in his bed.

"It's the 'bad boy mystique'," Krillan had told Vegita, somewhat glumly. "The fact that you three are dangerous looking and of the same race that purged Chikyuu turns some girls on."

But now, Satan was glowering at him from under his bushy black brows. "We know what you want, Prince of Vegita-sei," Satan's deep bass rolled through the room like the voice of a trained performer. "And I am against it. I won't budge a whisker on this, Briefs!"

"Satan," Vegita said, keeping his voice neutral, but dropping the honorific suffix from the man's name. He watched the heavy-browed Chikyuu-jin's hands clench in anger. "We have hoped, based on the long range sensor reports, that there would be no one to greet us on Soussa other than the indigenous population. As of yesterday, the newest scans reveal that the system has moderate space traffic. If you lead the landing party to barter with whoever we find has taken possession of Soussa, how will you deal with them, Satan? How will you treat with Trade House swindlers, Red Demons, Avarisei-jin, or any one of a thousand races who might have taken this world as payment for their labors in the Rebellion? Serulia lies closest to this world on the star charts. Tell me, Satan, or Briefs-san, or Goma-san, or anyone here-What should you do if a Serulian offers you the hospitality of his house?

"Um…say no?" Krillan asked, his snub nose crinkling with interest.

"If you except his hospitality, he will offer you his wives for the evening. It is common courtesy among Serulians. But your kind are far weaker physically than the most frail Serulian, and their mating habits are notoriously violent. You would not survive the encounter, but to refuse is a mortal insult."

"Or we could throw Rikkuum here at her," Krillan suggested brightly. "He's pretty damn strong." He reached up and clapped the big man on the shoulder. "What do you say, big fella? Wanna take on for the team?"

"I…" Rikkuum turned scarlet. "I am not skilled with women."

Vegita felt his lips threaten to twitch, saw Yamcha and even Satan fighting down grins as well. The small Chikyuu warrior had some innate gift for diffusing tension.

"Okay," Yamcha said. "You have made your point, Prince Vegita. I know Briefs-san agrees with you and I can see the logic in what you're saying. But let me ask you a question," he swept his gaze back, including Coran and his brother. Okuda had moved forward silently to stand in Coran's right. "What will the three of you do when you sit across a barter table from this Serulian, or whoever it happens to be, and he begins to gloat about the fall of Vegita-sei. Or to talk about how much fun he had at the 'Great Circus of Shikaji' last time he was there?" Vegita was silent, but all his internal muscles had tensed in knotted rage as he imagined such an encounter. He held his breath in and released it very slowly before speaking.

"I can hold down my hatred for a man I must sit at table with as well as you," he grated, feeling a great deal of satisfaction that the barb in that statement had not gone unnoticed by Yamcha, or by the other Elders around the table. Vegita met the Chikyuu warrior's angry eyes and clamped down once again on the fury, that this man, this jumped up weakling excuse for a warrior should question his control of-

He took one more deep breath, teeth ground together. None of this inner turmoil had showed in his face or posture. Outtoussama would have been proud. "Dodoria is not the only Rebel leader who will be taking former Empire worlds 'under his wing'. The rush is on for every opportunist with a dozen warriors at his command to grab as many worlds as he can, and set himself up as petty dictator. The Empire is...it is no more, but nature abhors a vacuum. This new alliance will not last. Soon, the enemies of Vegita-sei will begin to war among themselves to see who will be the new master of the galaxy."

"Meet the new boss, same as the old boss," Krillan said softly.

"Well, let's cut through the fat and settle this now, so we can get some sleep. Tomorrow's going to be a big day." Briefs smiled around at all of the others, his kind paternal smile softening the faces of even the most tense members of the council. "Satan-san, unless you can memorize several hundred customs, treaties, and cultural mores between now and tomorrow morning, I think you'll have to agree that we need Vegita to be in the landing party." Satan grunted, looking severely displeased, but nodded uncharitably. "Yamcha and Krillan will go as well, and I think Rikkuum will have to be physically restrained to keep from following Vegita, so we'll take him along too."

"We?!" Vegita frowned in annoyance as he realized he and Yamcha had spoken the same word in the same breath.

"There are some parts for the hyperlight stabilizers on the ship's engines that I need to replace," Briefs said. "Okuda told me several weeks ago that the quantum regulators are dangerously out of wack. We've not fallen out of hyperlight speed once in six months, my friends, to keep from running into anyone who might ask awkward questions about how we came by this Maiyosh-jin made ship. Several things involving the engines' integrity are sort of on the blink, and we have to get parts for them now."

"Okuda can go on the barter party as easily as you," Vegita said.

"I can," Okuda said solemnly, "But…in a few months, Briefs-san has gained a better understanding of quantum mechanics than I will ever have. If he must make do with a part that is similar, or construct what we need from scratch, he must be there to look over whatever they have in stock and see what may be cobbled together from pieces."

The Elders voted, while Vegita stood by, meeting Yamcha's eyes across the table. Briefs had it his way. Satan grumbled and muttered among his own folk, but did not cross him as Briefs motion was carried by the majority. A more stupid, wasteful, dangerous way to govern a people Vegita had never seen. But the old man could not be swayed to admit that he should simply lead them with one law and one voice-his own. Briefs would not take the voice to determine their own fate away from his people and lead them himself. Madness.

He waited until the last observers had filed out, before he turned on the old man with a snarl. "You will not put yourself in danger!" He snapped.

"What he said!" Krillan agreed emphatically. "Jisan…we can't lose you. We have no way of knowing what we'll find down there."

But Vegita begin to feel all his anger draining away as he watched the old man's mild, bookish features melt out of the easy good-natured mask he had been wearing throughout the round table. His face was drawn and tired and there was an adamant set to his jaw Vegita knew well. In his woman, that look meant arguing was pointless. "How bad are the engines?" He asked slowly.

"Bad," Briefs said. "They've been bleeding plasma coolant for about a month and…" He gazed around and the intent faces of the younger men. "There's something else Okuda and I just discovered today. We knew something was fishy in the way Soussa seemed to be almost deserted two months ago, then was all of a sudden jumping when we took our last couple of sensor readings. The quantum stabilizers are kaput, boys. We've been slipstreaming in hyperlight speed almost since we left Chikyuu. We left Chikyuu six months ago, subjectively. But we've been gaining time at a ratio of about six to one in real space. To us, it's been six months. To everyone else in the galaxy, it's been a little over three years and a half years." He gazed around at the stunned faces of the men around him and nodded grimly. "If we don't fix the problem now, boys, we'll be dead in the water within a month."

Of course, Vegita thought furiously, as he stalked back to his barracks bunk. He should have known this ship would be falling apart. It was an old Maiyosh House freighter, converted into a troop carrier after the fall of Maiyosh Prime, used in Jeiyce's hit and run war against the Saiyans throughout the long years of the Resistance, then through the course of the war. It was a wonder the fool thing held together as long as it had. He lay down on his bunk, his hand straying to the data disc of his woman's diary, lying beside his bed in a code locked mini-comp. Three years? Gods…

He sat up, steadying his breath, staring at the mini-comp as though it were a poisonous viper. Three years. And in that time, he had not listened to the diary once. The end had nearly broken his will to live, had left him in a state of-

Unless it was not the end. Romayn had said that given time, she would recover.

He leaned forward and hit the play switch.

Nothing. Silence.

Of course. He lay his head down on the pillow behind his head, closing his eyes. "Lady…" He whispered. He could not weep. There was a kind of pain and regret beyond any physical expression that simply was. He would live. He would come to her with his great gift. He would make it right, if mortal hands were capable of making amends for all his sins. And then…then…

Then he would go, and leave her in peace.

"Lady, I will find you," he whispered. And slept.

The nervous tension between his shoulder blades sank into his bones the instant they set foot on Soussa. The new master of Soussa, a younger grandnephew of the old _Hadshi_ of Serulia House Banking, was a smiling, garrulous man named Zandu.

He had sent back a cordial, even eager, response back to the freighter in reply to the Chikyuu-jin's request to land with a small barter party.

Now, seated cross-legged upon an intricately ornate and terribly uncomfortable beaded Serulian rug, his head filling with the perfumed smoke of incense and cooking fires, Vegita could see the man was fairly salivating at the prospect of rooking a group of trusting rubes out of every scrap of technology and potential wealth he could. The few small gadgets Briefs had casually presented as an opening bid made the Serulian's dark, heavy-browed eyes glitter with excitement. Vegita sat silent and watchful behind the mask of his holographic Chikyuu-jin guise as Bulma's father feigned doddering semi-senility, waving his own tinkerings under the merchant's gleaming eyes. A sensor net that could detect and isolate a thumb-sized particles on the edge of Soussa's solar system bundled with a decapsulation catalyst that would forcibly decapsulate anything-such as an encapsulized plasma nuke-that struck the sensor net. In these days of political uncertainty, Briefs was quite literally dangling a prize beyond price in front of the Serulian.

"We've been a space-faring people for less than five years," Briefs told Zandu, drinking down the hot mug of _kaval_ one of the Serulian's wives offered him without choking. Vegita could not have done the same. The Serulian drink made most other races nauseous to the point of voiding their spleens. Ottoussama had firmly believed that this was the very reason Serulians served the drink as customary hospitality to aliens during trade and banking negotiations. A man trying desperately not to vomit is never at the top of his game. Briefs actually smiled as he polished off his cup.

"My goodness! That tastes almost exactly like fresh ground coffee. May I have another cup, my dear?" Zandu's wife blinked in surprise, but poured him a second draught obediently, her deep green skin flushing a shade darker as the old man winked at her. "But as I was saying, Zandu-sama, we would have been lost when the center of the meteor storm struck our world if this derelict freighter hadn't drifted so serendipitously into our system a year before. We patched her up as best we could and set out looking for a new home. But as you can see, she still needs as bit of work. Our main concern is that we're running out of provisions."

"And the soldiers on board?" The armored, red-skinned soldier on Zardu's asked, his hard face intent. "Was anyone left alive?"

"No one," Briefs lied sadly. "There was a huge hull breach that must have destroyed the central life support. It looked like the people on board had been fighting."

"There were soldiers of your race, Horda-san," Vegita added in a soft, differential voice, watching the way the Maiyosh-jin liaison's eyes glinted with suspicion. It was a likely tale though. So many ships had been lost during the most heated battles of the war, it was impossible to account for all of them. "And there were bodies of your great enemies, the Saiyans, as well. They must have torn the ship apart while fighting inside it. We do not know for sure. The logs were blown to bits, along with the life support."

"Or you erased them," the Maiyosh-jin said bluntly. Zandu would have spoken, but the Red Demon cut him off with a curt wave of his hand. Which settled the question in Vegita's mind as to who was really in charge of this world. Apparently, the New Alliance was posting a unit of Maioyosh-jin warriors on every 'protectorate' world, regardless of which race had claimed the system as their portion of war spoils. Jeiyce was trying to consolidate Maiyosh-jin rulership, then, with all other races as subordinate members in the new order. Horda still eyed him with that same hard, piercing stare, but his gaze was free of contempt. Unlike the stares of the other Maiyosh-jin warriors who stood at their captain's shoulder. Their poorly hidden sneers said more eloquently than any words that Vegita was less than a man because he had no fighting power. Vegita felt his hands clench into fists.

"You needn't have bothered," Horda said without reproach. "If you thought someone would read the logs and take this ship from your folk. We scrapped all of the older rust-buckets of this make and model as soon as we got the ship factories of Arbatzu back up and working again. You know about the war, then? How long have you been monitoring the hyperlight news broadcasts?"

"Since we found the frequency on the ship's communications scanner," Vegita said. "We gave this part of space a wide berth until we were sure the war had ended. We did not wish to be caught in a battle."

"Smart move," the Red Demon chuckled, his hard features easing into a friendlier set. "The monkeys would have made short work of your ship." He glanced back at Briefs and the sensor net demo in the old man's hands. "Or perhaps not. You patched up a blown out freighter, limped halfway across an uncharted black sector of space, and rewired, dissected or rebuilt features of capsule technology that you found floating on board your ship."

Zandu nodded with an eager smile. "If your people are as craftwise as you seem, you'll have no trouble finding contract on Arbatzu or even Shikaji. In fact, I could send a letter of introduction with you if you decide on Shikaji. My second cousin is a junior marketing chief for a small arms concern there."

Shikaji. The new center of the New Alliance's government. And home of the Great Circus.

"We'll take the matter up in our next elders' meeting," Briefs sad, looking artfully intrigued. "We can't keep traveling forever, that's for sure."

"Shikaji is where you have imprisoned the last of your great enemies, is it

not?" The question would not be still. The grinding shame that he had known for half a year what his people were suffering and been powerless to help them would not let him stay silent. "We only saw their dead bodies when we salvaged the ship. How many are left alive?"

"Not as many as there were," Horda said, his voice devoid of inflection. "A lot of them willed themselves dead after a while. Just turned up their toes and died. No one has run across any new survivors of the plague in a couple of years. I'd say there's less than fifty or so left in the Circus now." His lips twisted with repressed distaste. "If you want to see a live Saiyan, you'd better go to Shikaji soon. They'll probably be extinct in another year."

Zandu looked angry and unsettled. "That is not quite true, Captain. Somewhere, hiding in the depths of space, my friends, on some uncharted world, there are roughly thirty thousand Saiyan cubs still alive. Finding them has been and will continue to be Jeiyce-sama's single most important concern since the war ended. No one in the galaxy can truly rest easy until the last of that monstrous race is slain. If we don't find them-" he shuddered dramatically.

Horda nodded solemnly. "If they aren't found, they will come back to avenge their fathers one day. And the war will begin all over again."

"One warrior, one little cub even," Zandu said. "Could lay waste to an entire world in three days. Thank the gods you never met them. They were terrible. Terrible!"

"I'm sorry we raised unpleasant memories," Briefs said kindly. "My son is just curious about the war and all the things we've heard about on the news feeds, but never seen." He scratched his head thoughtfully. "So, about these little knickknacks of mine. I have time this morning to look over the inventory you sent us of all your tech supplies and I'm thinking we might make an ever swap of the sensor net and one or two other gizmos I've built for say…hmm…a full load of food concentrates and about…a dozen small pieces from your tech warehouse. I've got a list here."

Zandu studied the list for a moment, his eyes dancing with greedy joy. Then he raised both hands magnanimously and smiled. "I will make an ever trade, Trunks-san," he said graciously. "I do not often forgo the joy of haggling any price, but your plight and the courage and ingenuity of your people have touched my heart. It is a deal!"

"Now comes the hard part," Briefs told them as Vegita strode beside him out of the smoky stink of the Serulian's small palace. "We can't repair the quantum stabilizers in zero gravity."

"So, we have to risk landing," Yamcha said tensely, gazing around them at the bored soldiers, Serulian and Maiyosh-jin, going about chores, playing tri-dice. There were too many to take in a fight. "If even one person opens his mouth and-"

"No one is leaving the ship," Vegita said curtly.

"Satan-san's people are guarding the exits in case anyone should feel tempted to go exploring," Briefs said.

An hour later, Vegita found himself standing shoulder to shoulder with the Maiyosh-jin Captain, Horda, as they watched the freighter land, laying down the blue-green fronds of the swampy landscape around them. Briefs waved airily at him as he politely ushered two bored-looking Maiyosh-jin soldiers who had offered to port the larger of his pieces from the tech supply warehouse to the mouth of the freighter's main cargo hanger. Satan's men met them at the entrance and took the burden off food and tech parts from there. Briefs had been right in thinking Zandu would not have the exact replacements they needed, but he had compiled a list of instruments and mechanisms that he could fit together in place of what they must have. The upside of this was that the Serulians had no idea what repairs were needed or how bad the Chikyuu-jins' need was.

"I've never seen anyone con a Serulian in my life," Horda said conversationally. He caught Vegita's eye, marked his carefully blank face and grinned. It was an honest expression, wryly amused and…friendly. The expression looked strange on his hard face, as though Horda had had precious little to smile about in a very long time. "Don't worry, lad. I'm not here to help Zandu get any richer than he already is. Can your father fix whatever manner of mechanical trouble it is the ship has come down with?"

"There is nothing he cannot fix," Vegita said honestly.

"I was worried for your people at first," the Maiyosh-jin said. "Until I saw that sensor gadget and watched Trunks-san work old Zandu like a pro." He chuckled. "Now, I'm wondering if your race won't be setting up its own new Trade House in a few years. I noticed half your party seemed to have fairly high ki readings. But your father doesn't. And you don't register on the scouters at all." Vegita tensed visibly and the Red Demon eyed him shrewdly. "You move like a warrior, laddie. I can tell just by watching you walk that you've trained in the arts of war your whole life. What happened? Was it some injury?"

"You are not mistaken," Vegita said softly, harshly. He had to get away from this red bastard now, before he lost the last scrap of his self control and flung himself at the man, fighting power or no fighting power. "I was…injured when the first meteor struck our homeworld. I no longer have ki." The taste of those words was bitter as funeral ashes.

"Every living thing has ki, lad," Horda said, his plain, care-worn face intent. "It's made up of your own life force. The only way you could have no ki is if you were dead." Vegita stared in silent shock, as the older man smiled at him like a kindly uncle. "When I was a young man, the Saiyans purged my homeworld, Maiyosh Prime. I survived, but I took a head injury that seemed to have snuffed out my fighting power for good. But what the doctors called the 'ki centers' of a warrior's brain are just channels for your power, young Trunks. All the fighting power the gods gave you is still there. You just have to retrain your brain to route it differently."

"How…?" Vegita found his mouth was dry. He had given up hope and weighed all he had been as lost forever. "How did you retrain you brain, Captain?"

"You've been reaching for it from the same place you always drew it from," Horda said. "But that part of your brain is damaged now. Do your people have meditation techniques?"

"Yes."

"Search your mind, every part of it, for a new outlet. You'll find it, I promise you." And again, he smiled at Vegita. A strange, surreal vision from a Maiyosh-jin warrior. "I knew you'd been injured in the same way I was when I first saw you. I can feel your fighting power twisting inside you to free itself. Just find a new door to let it out, lad." His smile slipped away. "And find it fast. When you succeed your father as leader of your people, it will save all of you a world of grief if you are sporting a high fighting power."

"We will be seen as an inferior breed of sentient without it," Vegita grunted. The galaxy he had known since infancy was spun on its head, but none of his enemies seemed to have taken their own propaganda to heart. Perhaps it took having a man look down his nose at you, see you as less than a man, for want of power that made you no less or better in its absence. If Vegita had never seen that look from the receiving end, he would never have truly understood. Briefs had no fighting power, but he was a better man, a stronger man, than Yamcha, or Krillan. Or Vegita. His woman could not lift so much as a feather with her ki, but he would set her against any warrior in the galaxy.

Horda nodded grimly. "You're very quick. Take my council in this to your father, young Trunks. Do not take Zandu up on his offer to make port on Shikaji and sue his kinsman for employment. Jeiyce-sama has outlawed slavery, but the custom of bond servitude in repayment of debt is still going strong. Shikaji is a…tumultuous place to be now, and your people could easily find themselves indentured for the price of their own lodgings. Don't let curiosity to see the Saiyan captives or the new seat of galactic government draw you there. The Great Circus…" Horda's lined, grizzled features twisted in disgust. "It's drawn folk who have suffered so much at Saiyan hands that they are dead to all feeling but hate. And it has drawn others. Those who delight in torment for its own sake." He made a soft noise of anger. "I have no taste for such things. The war was dirty, and in the end, we won by the dirtiest means imaginable. But having won, we should have killed the last of our enemies honorably. Cleanly."

Vegita studied him silently. Another inversion of all that should be. To find honor in a Red Demon. "That is why you are stationed here on the frontier?"

"Jeiyce-ouji…" Horda said in a low voice. "I have served him since he began to lead small guerrilla strikes fifteen years ago. I've known him since he was a boy on Corsaris. I was made guard captain over the monkeys in the Circus as a kind of…gift for all my years of service to the cause. I lasted about a week before I passed one of them a shiv from by boot so he could take his own life. They passed it from man to man inside their cages. Twenty of them managed to kill themselves before someone caught on. I was reassigned the next day."

Vegita spoke softly, choosing his next words with great care. "Thank you for your advice, Horda-san. And for your kindness to my people."

Two days of cold sweat and tension dragged by slowly, while Briefs and Okuda labored side by side on the engines. The Chikyuu-jin inside the freighter, none of whom had seen sky or smelled fresh air in half a year, were angry and rebellious at having been barred from exiting the ship. Vegita avoided the sounds of their cabin fever and their ungrateful whining, spending almost all of his time outside. He slept both nights on top of the ship's starboard hull, gazing up at the stars as he drifted of the sleep after spending the last hours of each day in deep meditation.

It was there. His power…

He could feel it now, banked and drowsing in the well of his soul like a sleeping Oozaru. More that that…sweet gods of mercy, he could touch it! Only a little. Just barely. Just enough to draw out a pearl sized drop from the river of his ki. Horda had been right, and Vegita had been a mindless fool not to have known the truth himself. His power flowed out of the blazing hearthpit of his own lifeforce. It _was _his lifeforce. And the instant he had stopped reaching for it through the dead, burned out channel his ki had always poured through, the instant he had begun to seek it from the center of his self and let it find whatever road it could to physical manifestation-in that instant he had been suddenly, miraculously, joyously able to touch it again.

He lay on his back, staring up at the wide dark sky, feeling a sense of his own power thrumming through his body, feeling a kind of deep, quiet happiness he had only ever felt lying in his woman's arms. And for the first time since he had fallen to Chikyuu, in a shower of burning metal and shrapnel, his body broken, his heart torn to bleeding ribbons, he had some measure of peace. For the first time since he had heard his woman's soft, trembling voice bid thought, memory and sanity goodnight, all his hopes for any good future dying with the fading strains of her sighing farewell-for the first time, he had real hope. He had lived in a state of stubborn denial of reality, staving off broken despair and gray, blank-eyed hopelessness with one thread of hope. Her father lived. Her people lived. If she could only see them again, touch them, know they were real and not lost to her forever, she might…she might…

He had spent the first days of their journey in silent grief, fighting a desperate battle to keep from taking his own life after hearing the second half, the last half, of her journal. Gods…he had never really known her, had he? Not truly, though he knew every inch of her pale satin skin, every flavor of her sweet smile, every flicker of anger, every mood and quicksilver flash of her brilliant mind. Now…now he knew her. All she was, the full measure of her pain, her genius, her strength, her hatred, her love. Had he been fool enough, even after taking her to wife, even after seeing her madness, knowing he had been its author, had he been so obtuse, so selfish, that he had believed she owed him any debt of blood? He had driven her screaming into the arms of the Red Network. He had built the weapons she made for them by proxy as he labored each night of that first summer on her pain, her horror, her madness. Even after the fall of Vegita-sei, he had not truly understood. Not until he heard her tell her tale.

It had shattered him to pieces. The third and deepest, most profound, breaking of his life. And just as he had woken in Bardock's house a different man, just as he had found that the truest, deepest part of his power and self lay in his love for those he defended on the day Vegita-sei died, he had emerged slowly from this last blow…different. He could not say how. He had no talent for standing back and observing his own actions and manner. Whatever he was, to his own mind, he was simply himself. But Coran and Okuda had seen the differences and marked them, and though they had said nothing, he knew the changes must be profound. Let them gape at him if they wished. He did not care.

Bulma lived. He would find her. He would see her reunited with her father. At long last, he had again the strength to see that her father would come to her unharmed. He would trust in Romayn's words, spoken to Bardock at the end of her journal, that given time, she would be well again. He would trust that the boy saw things that were hidden beyond the mortal pale. She would be healed. She would be whole and happy. He had taken the data disc of her journal and bound it in a leather sheath, stringing it around his neck like a talisman of all his hopes.

The thud of soft cloth boots on the hull beside him shook him out of his reverie. He frowned up irritably at the man standing over him. Yamcha. But tonight, even the Chikyuu-jin warrior's brooding company was not unwelcome. An instant later Krillan landed lightly beside him.

Yamcha crossed his arms, his face hard and unfriendly. "Jissan said to tell you we're leaving at first light. We're closing the ship up as soon as Briefs-san gets back from saying goodbye to Zandu. The Serulians are giving him a few _kaval_ bean plants to take with us as a going away present. You sleeping out here again tonight?"

"It is good to breathe fresh air," Vegita said. "I will enjoy it while I can."

Krillan grinned. "I may stay out tonight, too, if the hull on the port side isn't taken. Don't tell anyone inside, though. They'll throw rotten tomatoes at us if they find out any of us spent the night outdoors while they were cooped up in the ship." He sat down and leaned back on his elbows, taking in the blue-black dome of the night. "So…did I imagine it, or did you fly up here about an hour ago, Vegita?"

"Trunks," Vegita corrected quietly, glancing back toward the Serulian city. Or the beginnings of what would be a Serulian city. It was little more than a makeshift bayou villa with surrounding barracks at the moment. "I flew," he said, turning his gaze from Krillan's mild expression of curiosity to Yamcha's suspicious glare.

"Were you planning on telling anyone your powers have come back?" Yamcha asked shortly.

"They have not 'come back'," Vegita told him, eyes narrowing. "I have been trying to…reroute my ki around the damaged centers of my brain. That is the best way to describe it. But it is working."

"Like someone recovering from a stroke?" Krillan mused.

"Very like," Vegita said. "And I imagine the task of recovering my full power will be as long and arduous. But tonight, I was able to fly. It was good to fly. I can do little else at the moment, but…it was good to touch my power again, if only a little."

"Yeah. I'll bet," Krillan grinned. "You gonna tell Coran and Okuda?"

"Tomorrow." Yamcha knelt down beside him, eyeing him closely. Vegita sat up, matching his stare. "You have something to say?"

"How strong were you, Vegita?" Yamcha asked quietly. "Before the plague?"

"I was the strongest my race had seen," Vegita said softly. "And just before I fell, my power leapt to something beyond imagining. For one briefs hour, Chikyuu-jin, I had the strength of a god."

"Coran told us how you saved Bulma and all the Saiyan kids." Krillan, ever the peacemaker, was gazing over at his squad brother in consternation.

"I don't like the thought of you getting your fighting power back, Vegita," Yamcha said tensely. "I've talked to the soldiers here in the last couple of days. Asked them questions about the war. They were full of stories about your people and about the Saiyan no Ouji. You purged more than fifty systems personally in the first few months of the war, you son of a bitch. You-"

"Yamcha! We need to have this discussion some other time," Krillan said nervously. "Like after we launch!"

Yamcha took a deep breath, swallowing his anger for the moment. "Okay. But I want you to know, Vegita. I won't let you hurt my people."

"I will protect you people," Vegita said softly, fiercely. "From Briefs-san, to the brats in the orphan's ward, to the least deserving fool in the ship beneath us. I will guard them with my life, because they are Bulma's people. I will guard each of you with my life because you were her friends. I will see her reunited with all of you, because it will heal wounds in her heart she has carried since the day Chikyuu burned." He bared sharp teeth in a hard, feral smile. "But I do not mistake you, Yamcha of Chikyuu. You do not hate me for the billions I have slain in war, or for the threat you think I represent to your people. You hate me because the woman you have loved since boyhood is my mate and not yours."

The silence ticked out between them like the eternity between the killing blast aimed at you heart and the instant it pierces you breast.

"You're right," Yamcha said hoarsely. "She should never have been yours. If that bastard who murdered Son-kun hadn't stolen her away, we would have been happy, we would have…" His hands were clenched at his sides in impotent agony. "I don't like you, Vegita. I don't think I ever will. But it's not your fault she was taken away from me. If we find her and the rest of your people…gods, when I see that monster who kidnapped her-"

"The man who took her from Chikyuu has become a second father to her. He calls her daughter and would gladly die for her. If you raise your hand against him when we all meet again, you will have to face her anger, Yamcha. Her wrath is a terrible thing to see. I imagine it was so, even when she was a girl."

Krillan smiled wanly. "She used to scare the hell out of me when she got mad."

Yamcha gave his brother something that was close kin to an answering smile. "I've hated you as though you cheated me out of the good life I might have had with her," he said somberly. "That's not right." He met Vegita's gaze levelly. The Chikyuu-jin's brown eyes were clear and direct, free of malice or fool's pride. Free of innocent blood and all the monstrous sins that lay on Vegita's head and heart. She would have…Vegita swallowed hard. She would have been happy with this simple, honest warrior. And…and…and she might be again, once she was reunited with him. Once Vegita was no longer there to plague her with the love that had nearly destroyed her. That _had_ destroyed her. Vegita nodded silently in response to the man's apology, not trusting his own voice.

Neither of them spoke until Krillan cleared his throat. "Hey, guys?" He said in a conspiratorial whisper. "I found out something today. Can you both keep a secret?"

Vegita regarded him curiously, and Yamcha nodded mutely. The little man leaned forward intently. "Rikkuum's got a girl."

"You lie," Vegita said softly.

"Who?" Yamcha's mouth was twitching at the corners.

"You know that knockout girl with the long, curly blue hair and the really generous…um…endowments? The one who's little Videl-chan's nanny?"

"Marron?!" Yamcha choked.

"I saw her kissing him down in the upper storage hold," Krillan said. "He was being sly, pretending he didn't know how to kiss so she could 'teach him' the old Chikyuu-jin lip lock."

Vegita felt his shoulders beginning to shake. "I do not think he was pretending." But…good, he thought. Good for Rikkuum.

"Good for him," Yamcha echoed the thought, grinning slightly. "He's not the brightest guy around, but he a good man."

"Yeah, well she's no brain surgeon either," Krillan said. "Their kids will be-"

The Maiyosh-jin were around them, encircling them. Yamcha tensed and Vegita was on his feet in a heartbeat, poised to spring. The red bastards were leveling ki-killers at them from point blank range. Horda's face was bleak and resolute.

"What treachery is this, Captain?" Vegita spat.

"I'm sorry, lads," the Red Demon said. "I truly am."

He and the other Maiyosh-jin fired as one.

Vegita woke, growling weakly, nightmare memories of Jeiyce's torturer's cell turning his blood to ice, his gut to a twisting mass of vipers.

"Easy, son," Briefs' hand on his head, gentle. As gentle as Bulma soothing Romayn.

He tried to sit and could not. His muscles were still jelly from reaction to the ki-killer. They were in some kind of spartan brig cell. Beside him on the floor lay Yamcha and Krillan, still unconscious. He sank back down and slept again.

"…no excuse, Captain," Briefs was saying. Vegita say weakly and cried out faintly at the leaching, pulling sensation, so horribly familiar from his torment on Avaris. A ki damper. They had shackled him with a ki damper! He twisted and thrashed, uttering a choked, sobbing snarl at the feel of the evil thing collared around his throat. No…not again. Not this…not this again!

"Trunks! Stop it!" Hands, pulling at his clenched fists, drawing them away from the white Tsiru-jin collar. "It's primed to blow your head off it you tear it off," Briefs voice said urgently. "Calm down, son!"

Vegita breathed deeply, in and out, slow and even. He pushed out of Yamcha and Krillan's restraining grips, and sat, glaring cold black murder at the man on the other side of the bars.

"Treacherous bastard," he hissed at the Maiyosh-jin.

"I had no choice, lad," Horda said solemnly. "There's a galaxy-wide arrest warrant for all of you. For all Chikyuu-jin."

Vegita glanced down at the innocuous-looking band around his wrist. Somehow Briefs' shielding on the holo-gadget had allowed it to elude the Maiyosh-jin tech scan. To the naked eye, the device looked like a bare, ornamental band. Which explained why Horda had not given him the quick merciful death he granted those poor Saiyan wretched on Shikaji."

"We aren't criminals," Yamcha said harshly.

"I know that," Horda said, not meeting his eyes. "But you are Chikyuu-jin. You, Briefs-san, and your son, are immediate family of the most wanted woman in the galaxy."

"Jeiyce means to use us to draw her out of hiding," Vegita said, cold horror sinking into his chest like a spear made of ice. And she would come. Gods…if she had any wit or sanity left at all, she would come to save her father and her people!"

"Yes," Horda agreed. "We realized who you were that last evening, when one of my men got a look at your ship's serial number. You'd scored the number off the hull, but he caught a glimpse of it just inside your ship's docking hold when he was delivering the last of your food supplies.. We'd been trying to puzzle out which ship it might be since you arrived, hoping it would account for friends or family who are still MIA since the war ended. When we ran the serial through the database computer, the arrest warrant popped up. After Dodoria and his crew failed to return from Chikyuu three years ago, Jeiyce led a rescue fleet himself, thinking Dodoria must have found what he sought and died shortly thereafter. We found them all dead, most by violence, the last few from starvation. What the hell did you do to them?"

"We stranded them on Chikyuu with only each other for company," Briefs said somberly. "They could have survived if they'd worked together. I imagine they turned on each other when the food began to run low. Even if you blame the four of us for their deaths, that doesn't explain why you're towing the freighter carrying fifteen thousand innocent people in a tractor beam behind this big warship of yours. What do you think Jeiyce will do with my people if...if he does manage to catch my daughter? What will he do with us if he fails to catch her?"

Horda looked uneasy. "When we've caught the Saiyan no Ouji and her wards, there'll be no reason to hold you any longer. Jeiyce-sama will let your people go. As you said, none of you are criminals."

"You do not believe your own words, Captain," Vegita said softly.

The Maiyosh-jin left quickly, back straight, shoulders taught. He did not want to hear what he already knew. That Jeiyce's revenge knew no bounds of fairness, law or decency.

The Maiyosh-jin warship was a new model, equipped with an ultra hyper light drive. One of Bulma's improvements on the standard Saiyan carrier engine that Jeiyce must have pilfered before blowing Vegita-sei to dust. The journey to Shikaji took fourteen hours, and in that time, Vegita had the luxury of imagining every possible horror Jeiyce would inflict in Bulma if she fell into his hands. And all that he would surely do to Briefs when they arrived. He pushed and prodded at the new found circuits of his ki, writhing against the crawling horror of the ki-damper around his neck, delving deeper into the well spring sink of his power, the center of his life force. He sat like a man made of stone, so deep in a meditative search for a way, a new road, that would allow him to release all the god-like power that slept inside him, enough power to save them all, that he did not respond at first when Briefs shook him. Somehow, he had gone so deep into himself, he had not noticed that they were on solid ground, in natural gravity now. They Red Demons had moved them, cell and all, to a new location. They were on Shikaji, they must be.

"Someone's coming," Krillan whispered.

Their cell from the brig of Horda's ship, a six-sided cage cube of magnetically shielded bars, was now sitting in the center of a pitch black stone-walled oubliette with one knobless ardantium door. The clatter of boot heels on stone grew louder, and the door swung open. Horda, grim-faced as death, entered the prison with a brace of Maiyoshi-jin warriors and one Madrani tech. The Captain nodded to the tech and the gold skinned man adjusted a remote controller on his palm. Vegita felt the hum of the collar's power setting rising, felt the strength seep from his limbs like water through a clenched fist.

"Where…" Vegita managed to ask as Horda's men pulled him unsteadily to his feet, dragging him and Bulma's father out of the cell and out the door of the dank sepulcher.

"You're on Shikaji," Horda said tonelessly. "Let's go, lad." They half-pushed, half-dragged him through a maze of stony corridors, up a blur of stairways. The collar…gods, the collar was set so high he could barely hold his head up. At some point, he must have passed out. Then he was jerked back to awareness, feeling and mobility returning to his body.

"That's better," a familiar voice chuckled easily. "No need to turn up the juice so high he can't see straight."

Vegita raised his head, vision clearing, and stared into the smiling face if the Red Prince. Vegita met his gaze, face blank, eyes neutral, as he sat beside Briefs in the too-comfortable padded chair Horda had shoved him into. _I will kill you, Jeiyce of Maiyosh. I will._ He turned to regard Bulma's father and blinked, unsure he was not delirious. The old man was calmly stirring sweetener of some sort into a steaming mug of Serulian _kaval._

"I never did get the chance to thank Zandu-san for this drink before he bush-whacked us back on Soussa," Briefs was saying. "Trunks, this is Jeiyce-sama, Maiyosh no Ouji and new…is it Emperor or King of the New Alliance, Jeiyce-sama?"

"Prelate," Jeiyce said amiably. "I was just explaining to your father, young Briefs, that it is unfortunately necessary to keep your people in their stolen freighter under house arrest until this little drama has played itself out."

"Until you have killed Bulma and the children she rescued from the wreck of Vegita-sei," Vegita said coldly.

Jeiyce's smile didn't falter. "I'm at the end of a long, bloody undertaking, Trunks of Chikyuu. Those thousands of surviving Saiyan cubs will grow strong if they live. And all the killing will begin all over again when they do. I don't expect you to understand or be happy that I am using you and your father as bait. But I will see this done, no matter what the cost. I've broadcast your father's likeness and your own on all the galactic news feed. I will give her a week to show herself. If she doesn't come, I'll add you to the Circus, laddie. I imagine the brother of the Saiyan no Ojo will be a great hit. If the lovely and talented Bulma of Chikyuu still refuses to grace us with her presence, I will add your aged father to the spectacle and begin executing one of your people each day she makes me wait. But I think she will come. Don't you agree, Briefs-san?"

"There's an old Chikyuu-jin proverb that keeps running through my head over and over since we began this conversation," Briefs said with a frown. "Would you like to hear it?"

Jeicye leaned back in his chair that bore more resemblance to a throne than a Maiyosh House corporate Seat, and nodded. "Sure."

"Be careful what you wish for," the old man smiled. "Because you just might get it." He drained the last of his _kaval,_ eyes straying across the ostentatious desk Jeiyce was lounging behind almost indolently. "Well…we appear to have a week's worth of time on our hands. So, tell me, Jeiyce-sama. Have you ever heard of a game called chess?"

The remainder of the interview was a bizarrely cordial, almost social, affair. Briefs launched into a succinct description of the moves and strategies behind the game, and the Red Prince seemed intrigued, saying it sounded very like the Maiyosh-jin game of Thrones.

A week inched by in the fashion of a leaf slug scaling Mount Cho-tal. Strangely, the Maiyosh-jin did not torment them, didn't hurl so much as a verbal taunt in the direction of their four star prisoners. They barely paid them any mind at all. Horda was the most common face they saw, and he stood guard, stone-faced, each day from noon to midnight. Every day at noon, the noise would begin to build, seeping down through the stone layers of the great monolithic hymn to architecture they were imprisoned beneath. It would grow to a roar, a howling mass of voices of every race, every description, raised in a din of blood mad joy. The Great Circus of Shikaji.

There was only one place it could be held. If Vegita had given the matter any thought at all he would have known where they were. Years ago, when he had led that ill-fated purge mission and met the Red Prince in battle for the first time, he had seen the forest cities of Shikaji burned to the ground. But one structure they had spared on his father's command. The Chamber. It was a domed coliseum the size of a city, and it was the only place Vegita had left any stone standing upon another on this world. Ottoussama had thought the Chamber might make a center for a new Imperial finance concern. Now….now it held the Circus. Every day, the crowds filled it to overflowing and cheered at the sight of torture. The torture of Saiyan survivors of the Tsiru-jin Plague. The cheers were so loud. So loud he had to fight the urge to press his hands over his ears to shut out the sound after the first hour or two.

"Tell me, Horda-san," Vegita said after three nights of this. "Are you happy to be back in your Prince's good graces? Will you cheer with the rest of them when they tear my father's limbs from their sockets and begin executing one of my people each day?"

"Shut up!" The older man said in a hollow voice. "I've served Jeicye-ouji since he was a boy. I won't betray my people or my Prince, so stop trying to make me feel like shit. I already do, but it doesn't change anything!"

Vegita sank back into silent tension, and resumed his hell of waiting for the guards to bring Briefs back to the cell. Whatever indistinct, eerie charm the old man exuded like a shield against evil had worked its will on the Red Prince. Each day, Briefs was taken from their cell to speak with Jeiyce, to teach him the intricacies and tactics of chess, to discuss Chikyuu-jin politics and history. And each day, Vegita waited with his heart in his mouth to see if the old man's luck would hold Jeiyce's madness at bay. Each day he sat, removed from the others, calling to Coran and Okuda, who were still locked within the freighter with Rikkuum and fifteen thousand terrified Chikyuu-jin. Articha's sons had not been idle, he learned, after two days spent straining the limits of his minimal telepathic abilities to contact them.

"They are grounded just outside the Chamber," he told Briefs on the sixth morning of their imprisonment.

"How big is the auditorium above us?" Yamcha asked tensely.

"As big as West Capital was," Briefs told him. His blue eyes were dimmed this morning, the lines of his face more prominent. "The Chamber's main arena is about two kilometers in diameter. Jeiyce let me watch the Circus last night, boys." He sighed, his gaze fastening on Vegita. "It was a very hard thing to watch…Trunks. I had never imagined that people could do things like that to each other…" He cleared his throat. "But you say that everyone inside the freighter is keeping busy? That's good. I left 'Kuda a lot of toys to play with in my workshop."

Vegita returned the smile coldly. Krillan and Yamcha nodded in silent understanding. Bulma's father had made alterations and improvements to the Rebel technology, Bulma's inventions, they had found on Dodoria's ship. And though Vegita and the others were undoubtedly being watched and bugged every second, the old man understood what Vegita could not say openly. Articha's sons and the others would not be held captive in the freighter much longer.

"Gods, I hope she's careful when she comes," Briefs murmured.

"She is not near," Vegita said quietly. "Not yet. I cannot sense her at all." Though that could very well be because she was still barricaded against him, against their link. Or perhaps, she was not coming, could not come, because…because she was still locked inside the prison of his own madness. He had cast about to the ends of his senses, trying to catch the faintest scrap of her thoughts, her presence. But there was nothing.

"If she doesn't show," Yamcha muttered. "You go to the Circus tomorrow evening."

'So I do," Vegita agreed stoically. Let them tear his flesh and break his bones. He did not fear pain. He feared for his woman. He feared she would come and give her life for her father's. He had lain awake each of the last week in cold terror, imagining her in Jeiyce's hands, imagining Jeiyce doing to her all he had done to Vegita in that black pit on Avaris. Imaging her pain if her father's frail old body were torn to pieces before her eyes.

On the seventh day, they came for them at four hours past midday. All of them. The ki-dampers hummed around their necks like angry insects as Horda and half a dozen soldiers drug the four of them up the long curling labyrinth that led out of the dungeons and up to the Maiyosh House ancestral Seat in the tiered, domed-shaped coliseum of the Chamber.

"Keep your mouth shut when we get to the Seat, laddie," Horda muttered softly. "He's proper pissed tonight as it is. Test his temper and he'll hurt you all the worse."

"What had happened?"

They were through the wide doors of the Seat, and the noise, the roar, hit them like a physical blow. It was the sound of tens of thousands of voices cheering, screaming, shouting. The Circus was in full swing.

Jeiyce stood, clad in the crimson and white armor of Maiyosh House, in the center of the circular offices of the Seat. He did not turn to face them as Horda and his men dragged them into the room. Jeiyce was facing the open curtains that separated the office suites from the Balcony Seat. The Maiyosh House balcony Seat that looked down on the Great Circus.

"She's late." Jeiyce's voice was flat, matter-of-fact. "It could be she weighed the danger to the children's safety against your lives and found you wanting. It could be that she'll be here any minute. It could be that she and all the Saiyan cubs in her care are dead somewhere in the depths of space. But there's a more pressing matter right now. Your friends in the freighter are gone. The ship was surrounded by five thousand Red Demon guards. It was held down with a stasis tractor beam that could hold a small moon immobile at full power. And yet, about half an hour ago, the freighter up and disappeared on us. It just wasn't there any more." He turned to face them, moving toward them in an uneven, limping gait. It was the first time Vegita had seen him standing. He smirked nastily. Zarbon of Rashia-sei must have done some damage after all when he shot his Prince off the top of Cho-tal. The next instant, his head exploded in a blinding flash of white as Jeiyce struck him across the cheek with one black-gloved fist. Vegita spat blood, shaking off Horda's supporting grip.

"You are very brave with old men and warriors shackled in ki-dampers," he rasped.

"Are you offering to fight me, boyo?" Jeiyce asked softly. "One on one?"

"Take this collar off my neck, Maiyosh-jin," Vegita snarled. "And I will give you a fight you will not live to remember!"

Jeiyce grinned suddenly, all his good humor suddenly returning. "Maybe I will. But first, we need to coax your freighter back out into the light of day. I'll bet all I own that they are not far away. That they're watching us, trying to see a chance to set the four of you free. Let's see if seeing the four of you out in the arena will motivate them to rematerialize."

"They won't put everyone else in danger just to save us," Briefs told him.

"Probably not," Jeiyce grinned, his eyes full of mad good spirits. "But there's still your lovely daughter to think about. But whether anyone shows or not, I made a public promise to add her family to the Circus if she did not come. And I am a man of my word."

Horda's men shoved them forward, through the curtained arch that led to the Balcony Seat of Maiyosh House. They were thrown into chairs with a guard on either side, ranged along the edge of the Balcony's intricately hand carved railing. They had the best seats in the house. A gasp on his right, the sight of Yamcha's jaw clenched in rage, Krillan taking deep breaths, his eyes averted from what he was seeing below. Vegita only had eyes for Briefs. The old man was clutching at his left arm, just above the elbow joint, and Vegita felt his veins freeze as he remembered a med text he'd read at Bardock's house, something about the symptomology of cardiac arrest.

"Ottousan!" He said urgently.

Briefs met his eyes, shadows of fear and horror dimming the vivid sky blue gaze he had bequeathed to his only child. And he smiled faintly. "You've never called me that before, son. I like the sound of it."

"Horda!" Jeiyce had awkwardly eased his crippled frame into the most prominent, centered chair, another plush, throne-like assault upon carpentry and good taste. "If any one of them looks away from the show in the arena, cut off the right hand of one of the others." He grinned at them like a great, red cat menacing a cowering rodent. "I'm cleaning out the Circus tonight, my friends! I offered my father's old friend Horda a reward of his asking for bringing you to visit me here on Shikaji, and he asked that I put the last of the Saiyans out of their misery. He's a good man, but he has a weak stomach for the finer points of revenge. We've got a three-act show tonight with a grand finale. What you're all seeing is act one. A half dozen small appetizers for the crowd. And for the spear-toothed drackets."

Vegita stared down at the last of the 'appetizers' still left alive in the arena.

He was perhaps seven years old, and fleet of foot. And he would have made a brave, fearless warrior if he had ever had the chance to fight as the gods intended. He must have been in the Circus since Vegita-sei's fall, but he was still fierce-eyed, still clinging to life with all his strength. He could not fly, could not raise his ki to defend himself, but the boy was dodging nimbly from one side of the arena to the other, evading the pack of ten drackets Jeiyce had unleashed there-those drackets who were not too busy dining on the still bodies of the five other Saiyan children they had pulled down to bother stalking the one still left alive.

He lasted two hours before his strength began to wane and his small body began to tire and slow. Then they caught him. And it was over very soon after that. Spear-toothed drackets were far more merciful and kind than Circus crowds. Vegita raised his head, his eyes sweeping the throng around them, whose cheers of joy had escalated to deafening thunder as the drackets tore the boy apart. Behind him, Horda made a soft noise, but Vegita did not turn to look.

The second 'act' was longer. The Madrani techs and Maiyosh-jin soldiers wheeled ten naked, rail thin Saiyan women out into the arena one at a time, and one at a time, the warriors were drawn and quartered with deliberate, slow malice.

"Saiyans can take so much damage and still come back for more," Jeiyce said conversationally. "Most of the crowd here stays year around, but they still rarely see a death. It's not fully satisfying when no one dies. Like pulling out before you come. They're getting their fondest wish tonight."

Vegita did not look at the Red Prince, did not turn his eyes away from the sight of the woman below, the last of the female Saiyans left alive in the Circus. Her arms and legs were already gone, and she was being kicked to death by a crowd of laughing men. "What will you do when they are all dead? Draw lots among yourselves to see who will take their place?"

Jeiyce laughed softly. "Well…I had planned to replace them with fifteen thousand Chikyuu-jin. But your sneaky lot on board the ship cheated me out of that. I know they won't come. Truth to tell, I doubt your sister will show either. She was mad as a hop cat when I saw her last. I'll wager the Saiyans with her put her out of her misery shortly thereafter."

"It is a pity you have no loyal vassals left to do the same for you," Vegita breathed.

He could feel the Red Prince tense beside him, feel Jeiyce's eyes boring into

him. "Maybe so," his enemy said after a long, deadly silence. A soft sound on his right. Briefs had sat silent as stone throughout the first two 'shows', silent tears running down his face. Now, he had broken down completely. Yamcha tried to move out of his chair to go to the old man, but one of the soldiers behind him dealt him a blow that left him bleeding and half conscious. Briefs was clutching his arm again, as though the shooting pangs of his aging heart cringing against the horrors he was witnessing would stop if he clenched his hand hard enough. Vegita slid out of his chair, kneeling before the old man, testing his pulse. Horda made no move to stop him. Jeiyce didn't reprimand his Captain, only watched Vegita stare helplessly into the old man's tear-streaked face in agonized realization that there was nothing he could do to save his woman's father if his heart were indeed failing him.

"It's my arm, not my heart, son," Briefs said, smiling at him kindly through his tears. "One of the soldiers grabbed it too hard when they sat us down and I think he broke it."

Vegita felt a rush of mad, relived laughter well up inside him, and smiled back. "That is…not good. But it is better than the other."

"They killed your wife," Jeiyce said quietly. "They stole your daughter, old man, and gave her to a beast as his whore. They burned down your whole world. How can you cry for them?"

"My wife would have cried for them," Briefs said, his voice just as soft. "My daughter was enslaved by them and still found it in her heart to love them. How can I do less?"

"Jula-chan would have wept for the children today if she were here, my Prince," Horda said in a whisper.

The Red Prince's face went bloodless and immobile. He stared at Horda, his features drawn so taut with emotion he looked, for a brief moment, like a living

skull. "If you were not her father, I would kill you this instant, old fool," he hissed.

"We have won, Jeiyce-kun," Horda said, his voice shaking. "The enemy is dead and we are free. You do not have to kill these people."

Jeiyce took a deep, unsteady breath. "Take the Chikyuu-jin down to the arena, Horda. Do it now, or I will do it myself!"

Horda turned mechanically and pushed Vegita to his feet, toward the edge of the Seat. Then they were over the ledge, the captain bearing him down into the center of the great arena. The crowd seemed larger from here, ranged upward over the graduated tiers of the Chamber. And they were baying for blood. Behind him, Yamcha had begun to curse. Vegita whipped around and saw the reason why. They were surrounded by a ring of forty or fifty filthy skeletons. Their hair was matted with blood and filth, their eyes were wild and no longer the eyes of thinking men. They were the last Saiyans left alive in the Great Circus.

"Citizens!" Jeiyce's voice boomed out over the audio feed, and the crown roared in adulation. "We have a special treat tonight. The four men you see joining the Circus this evening are all kinsman of Bulma of Chikyuu, the Saiyan no Ojo herself!" The mob howled like blood man Oozaru. "Now, the game is simple. The Saiyan beasts have been informed that if they can manage to kill the old man-that's Trunks Briefs, citizens, Bulma of Chikyuu's father-then they will be allowed to die tonight. The Saiyan animals have no fighting power, and thanks to the Tsiru-jin ki-dampers they're wearing, neither do the Chikyuu-jin. Everyone in the mix has only their own physical strength and fighting skills to help him out.

Vegita and the two Chikyuu-jin senshi had formed a triangular gauntlet around Briefs without a word of discussion. "Do not hesitate to land a killing blow," Vegita told them. "You are doing them a kindness."

"Most of them look like teenagers," Yamcha said tensely, as the Saiyans began to circle them slowly.

"Killing blow?" Krillan said shakily.

"You have never killed before?" Vegita said incredulously, beginning to curse under his breath.

"We've spent our lives trying to save people, not kill them!" Yamcha snapped harshly. The ring of warriors was tightening around them.

_My soldiers,_ Vegita thought, staring into the gaunt mad faces of their opponents. _My people, my brothers, my-_

He struck with a howl of rage, a thousand screaming images of Avaris, of Jeiyce's mocking laughter, of all the torments he knew these pitiful creatures who had once been warriors, proud and strong, had suffered. He knew that madness, that place beyond the breaking point of will and strength, and the fury inside him seemed to blaze up from the well of his being, burning a new thrumming channel from his soul to the physical plane like lava scoring molten rivers through solid stone. He was moving in a blur of red-hazed motion and death, smelling the sizzling crackle of the hateful white Tsiru-jin collar around his neck as his ki rose up like a living thing taking flight, pouring through every nerve and synapse. He tore through them in a whirling fiery storm, each blow falling hard and true, a swift merciful deathstroke.

_My warriors, my brave soldiers…I will save you all the only way I may! Die like men, in battle, and rest!_

The last one fell with a sighing rasp of peace. Vegita had one brief second to see that Krillan and Yamcha were still standing in a protective flank on either side of Briefs. He had moved so fast, killed them all so quickly, neither Chikyuu-jin had

had time to join him. And Briefs was still miraculously untouched. Then the hammer of the ki-dampers struck them all again and they slumped to their knees.

Vegita scanned the edge of the arena for the pinched-face Madrani tech who held the controller to their collars. There he was, standing beside Horda. Vegita pushed again with a cry of rage and tore power undrained as yet by the collar's cold suction up from that deep, deep place of need in the well of his soul. He drew up another blast of power and hurled it into the heart of the sneering Madrani tech, who had been bleeding them dry with his remote controller as he began moving toward them across the arena, walking out brazenly ahead of Horda and his guards. The tech fell like a lightening blasted tree, and Vegita shot forward, his hand outstretched for the controller, feeling the burning sting of frying circuitry as his ki shot higher still. Too high for the infernal device to dampen or leash.

A boot connected with his head and he flew backward, spinning back toward the center of the ring where Yamcha and Krillan were lying paralyzed by their own collars beside Briefs. Jeicye was on him in a second, grinning hatefully as he caught Vegita's fists in each hand, forcing him down, forcing Vegita to his knees. He snarled in defiant rage, eye to eye with his greatest enemy…and it was all he could do. All that he had regained in this new burst of power, of need, was only a fraction of what he had lost. Jeiyce pushed him down to land on the dusty stone arena floor beside Briefs. Not enough, Vegita thought, as he glanced up at Bulma's father in raging despair. He had done the impossible, and it was still not enough.

"Your race is more dangerous than I thought if your ki can exceed its previous limits under duress the way you did just now," Jeiyce was smiling, limping toward them with sure deadly purpose. "Let's see if you can do that again, laddie. Maybe you'll even get your wish to fight me full out." He raised his open palm to Vegita, death and power gathering on the edges of his fingertips. "I'll bet you could even burst that ki-damper off your neck if I shot your father."

Jeicye fired.

There was no decision to make, no other road open to him. Vegita threw himself forward, into the on-rushing ball of energy. He felt the bolt slam into his chest, felt the burning, the deep mortal blow of his heart's blood boiling in his breast, the greater part of his lungs searing together under his shattered breastbone. Someone was holding him, propping him up.

"Stupid boy," Jeicye said from somewhere far away.

"Oh no…" Briefs voice, so full of wrenching grief. Grief for him?

"Hang on, buddy," Krillan was saying urgently. "Stay with us!"

Cheering everywhere, the crowd celebrating the Red Prince's victory over a man wearing a ki shackling collar. And he had achieved nothing, Vegita thought bitterly, wheezing in a burning gasp of air. Jeiyce would kill Bulma's father now, just the same.

There came a screaming, tearing thunder of twisting metal, of breaking mortar and stone. Something, a huge and monstrous shadow, loomed over them, blocking out the light. The Chamber's domed ceiling…Vegita squinted upward, unsure of what he was seeing. The half-shell roof was rising up off the main structural frame of the coliseum, as though it had been torn off by giant powerful hands.

Vegita blinked again, hearing the gasps of the legions of Circus-goers turn to screams of terror. And he began to laugh weakly. The roof of the Chamber _had_ been torn off by giant hands!

Two, then ten, then fifty giant, monstrous, glorious hulking forms set down on the arena floor around them. The thundering crash of their great feet striking the ground was like the shouting laughter of the gods of war.

"I told him," Briefs murmured in his ear. "Be careful what you wish for…"

Ki-killers were flashing everywhere, blasting the Oozaru in desperate, repetitive

hysteria. All the blasts bounced harmlessly off the immobile giants who stood in a shielding circle around them, almost as though at attention. Of course, she would have developed a shield against the ki-killers. She would have-

Jeiyce burst through the ring of Oozaru, shouting, howling in fear and rage. "Bitch! You bloody bitch from hell!"

The blue light of a ki-killer shot out from the palm of the foremost Oozaru, felling the Red Prince, dropping him like a stone. Horda flashed upwards out of nowhere, catching his prince, lowering him gently to the ground less than ten meters from where Briefs and the others knelt around Vegita.

The first Oozaru leaned down slowly, cupping something small and delicate in his huge hand, setting his precious burden down with incongruous gentleness.

"No killing, Bardock," his woman said sternly to the huge snarling figure hovering behind her like a mountainous guard dog.

Bulma stepped forward, moving slowly, inexorably, toward the Red Prince's prone, trembling body. Horda leveled a volley of power at her. A blue, shimmering shield flared to life around her, diffusing the killing blast harmlessly. Bardock roared, hefting the Maiyosh-jin captain up by one foot and shaking him like a rag doll. Every Oozaru in the arena screamed in rage, but Bulma raised one slim hand and silenced them all.

"I said no killing." She turned her gaze back to Jeiyce. Bardock obediently dropped Horda in an ungracious heap and the Maiyosh-jin immediately scrambled back to throw himself over the body of his prince.

"Ojo-sama," he said hoarsely. "Have mercy! He-I have know him all his life. He was a good man once."

"I know," she said softly, regarding Jeiyce with neither hate nor anger, though he would have slain her father and the last of her people out of nothing more than malicious spite. But her gaze held only pity. She knelt down beside her enemy and smoothed the sweat-soaked, pale locks from his eyes. "His hate dragon grew and grew until it ate his whole soul." She sighed sadly. "I'm sorry, Jeiyce. I'm sorry I can't make you understand that it's not too late to turn back, even now. I'm sorry I can't help you." She raised her eyes to meet Horda's. "You're Horda-san, second chancellor of Corsaris. Your daughter was Jula of Maiyosh House, wasn't she?"

"Yes," the man croaked.

"Take care of your son-in-law," she said. "There's still hope for him. As long as he's alive, there's hope he can recover."

"I will care for him as long as I live, Lady," Horda said softly.

"…kill me, Lady," Jeiyce rasped., trying to wrench away from his father-in-law's gentle embrace, trying to shake off the crippling tremors of the ki-killer and attack.

"No," she said implacably. "I'm taking my father and my friends and my people, and I'm leaving."

"I will find you!" He hissed. "…kill you all!"

"No," she said again. "I've erected a stalemate shield around this world. It's generator is self shielded, and it is sunk into the heart of Shikaji's sun. When we leave, you'll all be trapped on this world forever. You and all the Circus fans." She raised her luminous blue eyes and swept the panicking crowd in the tiered Seats with a sad, mournful gaze. "I wish you all joy in each other."

Then she turned her back on them and she saw her father for the first time, leaving her weeping, cursing enemy behind her without a backward look. She fell into the old man's arms, weeping and laughing at once.

"Poppa!" She sobbed. Her voice was like a joyous cry of all her life's hurts healed. "Poppa!"

The old man was weeping as well, though not with happiness. "Oh, honey…Bulma-chan! He's been shot. He took the blast meant for me!"

"Who…" Her soft hand on his cheek, like a sweet memory of bliss.

"Take…holo…" He tried to say. He could feel his life pouring out through the wound in his breast. There was not enough time left.

Briefs gently removed the holo-band from his wrist, and the disguise of light, color and shadow winked out and was gone. She stared down at him, not moving, like a woman frozen in time. Then she seemed to see him all at once, and she fell forward with a low cry, covering his face with kisses, her tears washing the grime from his cheeks.

"Vegita!" She whispered. "How…?"

"Rikkuum…saved." He pushed forward tentatively into the bond, as she received him with a cry of joy and mingled grief. The wound…she had finally taken it in and seen it for what it was. Mortal. There was no time left to say all that he wished. There was no time left at all.

_Beloved…forgive me._

_I do!_ She sobbed. _I did a long time ago. Oh gods, Vegita, no! It's not fair!_

_It is just, _he said gently. The world had shrunk to the sight of her beautiful, weeping face. Her lips were against his, soft as a feather's caress. It was a thousand times more than he had hoped for or dreamed possible. It was more than worth dying for.

"I love you," he said. The best words that had ever passed his unworthy lips. And the last.

"I love you, Vegita!" She said softly. "And…and I will see you again."

_It is good,_ he thought, smiling up at her. The warm blanket of death wrapped him in its embrace.

Sunlight, warm and gold, filtered with the tiniest tint of emerald, streamed into his eyes. He blinked and stretched on the down-stuffed pallet bed beneath him. The small, warm weight sitting straddled across his chest shifted impatiently. He finally managed to focus his sluggish eyes and frowned up curiously at the little figure sitting astride his chest.

"Wake up!" Said the tiny boy, glowering down at him imperiously. "You've slept a whole day and night!"

Vegita studied the child in utter fascination. A broad smirk began to slide across his face. Bulma's blue eyes, old Briefs' lavender hair, and…and the rest was utterly, indisputably, Vegita. A cold spike of horror shot through him. He sat up, tucking the boy under one arm. "I died. I think I died. How is it that you are here, boy? Did-did you-?"

"No, you were dead as a doornail," the boy said. "Dende-sama wished you back."

Vegita digested that for a moment. The mystic folk of Namek-sei…Could they really undo death as legends said? He shook these questions away with a mental shrug. He would have them answered soon, he was sure. But now, he gazed upon the small, wondrous creature in his arms, watching the boy's impatience grow, watching how the child's brow furrowed in the same way his own did when he was at a loss as to what to say next.

"Aren't you going to ask me who I am?" The boy said eagerly.

"Who are you?" Vegita asked obediently, though he already knew. He would have known this cub in a crowd of a hundred thousand brats.

"I'm Trunks-sama," the boy said proudly. "Saiyan no Ou."

"Not yet, boy," Vegita said with a soft, growling chuckle.

"Oh-I mean, 'Saiyan no Ouji.'" Trunks appeared suitably chagrined. "I'm used to you being dead…Poppa."

Vegita grinned slowly, watching his son's face light up light a beacon in reaction to his smile.

"Poppa's okay, then?" Trunks asked happily. Vegita nodded slowly. "Jissan Bardock said I should call you 'Ottoussama', but Nissan get to call _him_ Poppa, so I thought I could call you Poppa, too."

Vegita touched his chest, whole and scarless. His body was fit and strong. There was no sign or memory of the wound that had taken his life. A small hand touched his face lightly, shyly.

"I look just like you," Trunks said simply.

"Yes," Vegita replied. "Where is your mother? Where is Romayn? Where…"

"Nissan took the dogs outside to go poo," Trunks said. "He was waiting here with me for you to wake up. He just left a minute ago." The boy yawned hugely. "You took too long to wake up, Poppa…" His son was falling asleep in his arms. The small arms were looped around his neck with so much effortless trust Vegita felt his heart contract, a chill of protective dread for this son he had just met. Did the boy know that every world in the known galaxy would kill him for the sin of bearing Saiyan blood? He skimmed the edges of the boy's ki. Gods…the cub was strong.

He felt the foolish smirk return. Vegita stood perfectly still, feeling the gentle rise and fall of the boy's breath, a steady soft rhythm against his chest. What had his woman said? _He's going to be beautiful…all the good in you and me and none of the bad. _He lay his son's sleeping body on the floor bed, slowly, regretfully. There would be time to know his son. Trunks. A good name.

He was wearing only a pair of soft cloth breeches. He found a shirt of similar material lying tossed across the back of a chair near the door of the stone, windowless bedroom and pulled it on. He pushed his way through the canvas door drape and emerged into the warm afternoon sun.

He was standing on a precipice, a high craggy promontory that looked down on a sea of deep green grasslands, stretching out to the eastern horizon. The bones of the mountain beneath his feet felt strong, like the icy heights of the northern crags on Vegita-sei, the bleak, hard mountains that had strengthened the blood of his fathers, the ancient Northern Tribes. But this was not Vegita-sei.

The chimes of a thousand, of tens of thousands of individual ki bursts, sang inside his mind, far across the endless moorlands. They were distant, but God of gods, they were there! And they were many. The children from Med Center were alive and strong.

A duet of happy woofs, having scented his presence in the only way their kind seemed to retain thought and memory, and he turned from the cliff's edge to see the dogs tearing down a stone-carved stairway at breakneck speed. He had an instant to take in the intricately hewn hive of dwelling entrances, all polished and tooled to the smoothness of marble, all born into the side of the mountain that rose up behind him. A city chiseled out of the mountain's sheer cliffside.

Then both slobbering beasts slammed into his side in drooling, yipping hysterics of canine joy. "Foolish, worthless, mindless animals!" He growled softly with a wide grin. "Have you conquered the hop cats and rodents on this new world? Do they all bow down before you?" The beast answered him as best they could. He fingered a band around Yaro's neck, a collar of some kind that hummed with the current of a built mechanism. He frowned, thinking of ki-dampers. "Who had collared you, dog?"

"It's an anti-grav collar." He had not noticed the boy touch down beside him. Romayn would grow, Vegita decided, studying the changes of four years growth in the boy, to be a mirrored copy of his father. "Sometimes when I fly, they jump off the cliff after me. The collars activate if they do that, and they float instead of fall." The boy swallowed hard, smiled, and took a step toward him. "Hi, Vegita."

"You said my name correctly," Vegita said stupidly. And some foolish, inexplicable part of him mourned the fact that he would never hear the word 'Edeeta' again. Romayn was six years old now. A warrior grown. "It is good to see you, boy."

All Romayn's odd shyness dissipated in an instant and Vegita…he did not tense or frown, or draw back, as the boy shot forward and flung both arms around his middle in a fierce, happy embrace. "I missed you!" Romayn said. "I missed you so much!"

Vegita tilted the boy's head back from where it was buried against his stomach, drawing one hand through Romayn's star-spiked mane of tousled hair. "I am here. I live. But I do not understand how."

"We used the dragonballs," Romayn said quietly. "Dende is Namek-sei's new god, and he's really young, not much older than me. These are the first dragonballs he's ever made, so we can't use 'em again for a hundred years. But Dende said the Ojjiisan told him we're going to need you."

Vegita studied him, chilled despite the warm sun on his back. "For what?"

"Something's coming," Romayn said softly. "Something so bad it'll kill everything everywhere if we don't stop it." His eyes had gone distant and strange, the eyes of a soul that had crossed through the veil of life and death and returned with the memory of his journey. "It won't be for a long time. They'll tell us when it's time. Until then, we have to get strong." He seemed to shake off the fey strangeness, and he gestured to the horizon, across the eastern moors. "All the babies are there. They live with Nail-san and the other Nameksei-jin warrior priests. But some of the youngest kids have already moved in with some of the Chikyuu-jin who joined the Madrani settlement across the inland sea. A lot of them lost their little boys and girls when Poppa came to Chikyuu, so they're happy to have kids. Nail-san's warriors are teaching the bigger kids how to meditate and be nice and stuff." He gestured vaguely at the mountain city behind them, below them, above them. "This is where all the girls from Articha-san and Turna-san's ships live. They found us with Momma's sensor buoys about a year after we left Vegita-sei. A lot of them are kind of mean, so they don't live with the Nameks or the Madrani. Poppa and Jisan Toma and Articha-san and all the other grown-up Saiyans put them in barracks units and squads 'cause that's what they're used to. Momma said they have to go 'one step at a time'. Poppa says the older girls need a 'hard hand', cause they grew up Saiyan. That means Articha-san or somebody hit them if they try to eat a little Namek kid like one girl did last month. Vegita, why do girls always kick you in the balls when you spar with them and then laugh about it?"

"I do not know," Vegita grinned. "I suppose it is because it is our weakness and not theirs."

"Huh," Romayn said. The word was so much a perfect echo of Bulma's manner Vegita felt his chest tighten. "I have to go," the boy said. A quick, hard embrace and Romayn stepped back again. He took a leash he had hung from his belt and snapped it to the clasp of each dog's collar, speaking as he did so. "I'm going to go play with Krillan and Yamcha at the Chikyuu settlement. They were really surprised to see me. Krillan-kun fainted. I have to go there, cause they won't come here. They still don't like Poppa much. And I know you want to see Momma alone." He paused, staring up at Vegita's suddenly blank face. "She's up on top." He pointed straight up the side of the mountain behind them. Romayn punched a tiny control on the dogs' collars and both animals began to float upward like wobbly barking balloons. "Let's go, boys!" Romayn launched into the sky, pulling the hovering dogs with him by the leash, spinning back in the air the face Vegita.

"Tell Momma I'll be back for dinner. Oh, and Vegita? There's this girl at the Chikyuu settlement named Videl-chan who says you better not forget your promise. She hits really hard for a Chikyuu girl." And the boy sped away over the receding carpet of green, barking dogs in tow. Vegita watched him go silently.

He wondered vaguely if some mismanagement of Judgment had landed him in the land of the good dead, where all hurts were healed, all wrongs righted. His people, alive and growing strong. Alive and growing…different. Into a breed that would not savage a beautiful thing to possess it. Into a people who would see the worth in a man such as Briefs or Scopa. His son…his _sons_, growing strong and happy. His woman…

He clutched at the data disc, still bound in its leather pouch around his neck like a totem of courage. He bunkered the door of his mind, blocking the already vibrating threads of the link between them so as not to…to violate her thoughts. She was a closed door to him again, her mind and heart walled to him once more. The barrier was not cold, it was not encompassed by a swirl of madness, hate and pain as it had been when she left him on Vegita-sei. But it was there.

He steeled his mind and soul as best he could, and rose upward, drawing on his power with so little effort it only occurred to him when he was in the air that he had drawn it out of that dead place in his head, the old familiar channel of power his ki had coursed through since infancy. His fighting power, the full measure of the Legendary's strength, had been somehow restored to him with his life.

_That is good_, he thought absently as he rose higher, past the arched doorways of the Saiyan city. He wheeled around the side of the rocky crag and saw that this peak was first of a great range of stony, jutting, blade-like mountains that spread out toward the west. Each mount was carved out as this one, ornate cave dwellings for the wildest, hardest survivors of the fall of Vegita-sei. In the distant west, he caught thousands of flickers of incandescent ki bursts. Bardock and Articha running the young girls through their training regimens. He reached the summit of the first mountain and swept down onto the flat mesa top. His bare feet touched down on soft grass and Chikyuu-jin sweet clover.

There she was.

Seated on a wooden deck of gold-hued wood, amidst a rainbow garden of Chikyuu-jin flowers, she watched him land, watched him stop before her, a man in solemn contemplation of his fate, standing before his judge and jury. The sight of her beautiful face, smiling, happy and well, was a death knell to all his selfish hopes. He would not mar that look of sweet happiness to be near her. He must leave and soon. He knelt without a word, drowning in the blue of her eyes. Her face was perfect and serene, as he had imagined it, dreamed it. His hand strayed to the talisman around his neck and pulled it free of its tie, unwrapping the soft cho-deer skin pouch that held it safe. Slowly, he took her hand in his and lay the disc in her palm.

"It is the receptacle half of your journal," he said.

"I…I thought I'd put it in the capsules I stored with Scopa's personal things," she said softly. She raised her eyes to his and paled as she studied his face. "You listened to it all?"

"Yes."

"Vegita…" He was already making her frown, already causing those glorious eyes to brim with tears. Gods, he must leave her and soon.

"Jeiyce broke me first," he whispered. "And I became a different man. I broke open again the day my world died, when I thought you and Romayn and the last of my kind were about to be slain in Med Center. Your journal…it was the third breaking. And again, I changed. Too late to save you from all that you wrote and spoke. Too late to take any of it back." He lay his open palms flat on the wooden deck beneath them and bent forward, bowing his face down before her. "I will go now. I only meant to bring your father to you. Tell me what to do, Lady. Where to go. I will live and die at your command."

Soft hands raised him up, fragile, silken arms pulled him against her body in a trembling fierce embrace. She was shaking, weeping and smiling at the same time. He brushed away the tears from her face as she held him. Another ladle into the ocean of tears she had shed because of him.

"Kami, Vegita," she said in soft exasperation. "Why does it always have to be all or nothing with you Saiyans?"

"I cannot stay," he said hoarsely. "In your journal…Bulma, it was loving me that drove you mad in the end. I love you. It would not be love you if I chose to be near you at the risk of your sanity!"

She was silent, the deep blue of her gaze too bright. She was still crying, though not from grief, not from pain. She opened her free hand and pressed a second disc into his shaking fingers. "It's my new diary. I was just making an entry when you arrived. I began it when Trunks was born."

"His birth…it was what brought you back?"

"Not exactly," she smiled. "He's beautiful, isn't he?"

"Yes." He lowered his head. "I will be a father to him if you give me leave, Bulma. I know I have no right to him-"

She silenced him with gentle fingers against his lips. "Hush," she said softly. "I want you to hear the first entry of my second diary. Then…we'll talk. Okay?"

He nodded silently. He touched the audio on the little mechanism. It was recorder and data in one construct.

_Hi…_

_I'm back._

_It's been a long time, I know. I…I finally took my vacation. Heh. Not the kind I had pictured, but I feel…I feel much better. No. I feel good._

_I wasn't comatose while I was away. I was…I can't describe where I was, not really. There aren't any mortal words that would do it justice._

_It seemed, at first, like I was at one of Momma's cookout parties, the ones she'd always throw for Son-kun and the rest of my friends when they all came and crashed at Capsule Corp. I walked through the door into the back compound where the orchard and gardens are and Momma ran to me and hugged me, laughing, leading me by the hand into the midst of all the people gathered there. It seemed like it was morning and it seemed like it was evening, both at the same time. And the day…the day lasted forever. I know there were people around me, talking, hugging me, telling me how good it was to see me, and all of them were people I knew. People I had loved so dearly, and missed so much._

_I remember playing chess with Scopa. I remember Momma smiling as she set Karot-chan in my arms and told me he was too big for an old lady to carry around for long. I held him, covering his face in kisses, until he squalled to be let down and play with Rom-kun. He was older, both he and Rom-kun. They both seemed to be about four or five years old, and they play fought and tore back and forth across the garden like little comets. Dusca played with them when she could be pulled away from her dolls, but they categorically refused to join her at a tea party. There was only one other child there that day. He looked like he was the same age as Rom-kun and Karot-chan, but he never spoke, and seemed to be terribly shy, blushing to the roots of his lavender hair whenever I spoke to him. But he watched me everywhere I went with huge, intent blue eyes, hanging back unless Rom-kun pulled him by the hand forward to let himself be hugged. There was something so familiar about him it raised the hair on the back of my neck. He was beautiful, as beautiful as my sons._

_Rom-kun sort of came and went. I'm sure he wasn't always there, and I think I realized how he had come to this place of the always summer garden party at Momma and Poppa's when he just faded away in front of me, yawning hugely, saying drowsily, "Stop shaking me, Poppa!" as he turned to insubstantial smoke. He was dreaming himself here._

_Sometimes I was a little girl, as small as Rom-kun and Karot-chan, and we played together, every sort of game imaginable. At one point, deep in conversation with Scopa over some subject I can't even remember, I asked about Zarbon. Scopa only smiled and said he'd be along soon. Nachti and Noira said the same of Hiru. "He'll be here soon." I turned to Momma, who handed me another tall glass of lemonade and asked where Poppa was._

_She laughed and said, "That old silly! He's late, as usual." She said much the same about Yamcha and Krillan._

_Vegita wasn't there. I was afraid to ask where he was, but Scopa caught the thought I never uttered and reached out, taking my suddenly trembling hand in his._

_"You'll see him soon," he said with absolute certainty. He stood and hugged me, as though he were about to leave._

_"How soon?" I asked. "When?" And…what would I say if we met? What would I do? There was no hate in this summer land, no guilt for either of us, no blame, no memory of pain. We could love each other here, and be happy._

_"A day or a hundred years," Scopa smiled. "It's all soon." He kissed me and then he was just…gone._

_"No!" I said sharply. The sound of my voice, raised in alarm, was a sharp note o discord to everything around me suddenly. And I was…fading. Becoming more insubstantial with each passing second. Though maybe I always had been. The whole things sounds dreamlike when I listen to myself trying to tell how it was, what it was like, but it was more real, more solid, than anything I'd ever seen. "I don't want to go!" I said, beginning to cry. "I don't want to go back!"_

_"Sweetie, don't be upset," Momma told me, tucking me into my own bed, after everyone had said goodbye to me, one by one. "It's not as though you won't ever see us again." She kissed me and took Karot-chan from my arms._

_"My baby," I said softly, drowsily. "I missed you so much." And they were gone._

_Poppa was sitting on the edge of my bed now, where Momma had been._

_"I'm not leaving," I said stubbornly. I was suddenly very small, very young. No older than Rom-kun._

_"What about Rom-kun?" Poppa asked gently. "What about all the other children? Who's going to take care of them, Bulma-chan?"_

_I frowned furiously, not answering. I knew I wasn't going to leave Rom-kun and Baby Trunks motherless, but I was angry just the same. "Why did I have to come here, just to go back?!" I asked harshly. Now, I was a teenager, arguing with Poppa because he wouldn't give me what I wanted when I wanted it. "It's…it's going to make going back hurt more, knowing what I'm leaving behind!"_

_"It will hurt less," Poppa said. Behind him, Rom-kun was peeking in the bedroom door and edging across the room. He was tugging the lavender-haired boy by one hand behind him. "It's one thing to know intellectually that life is fleeting," Poppa went on gently. "That there is a state of bliss beyond the end of a good life where all pain is washed away, where you are reunited with all the loved ones you have lost. But it is another thing altogether to have been to that better place, to have held your lost son and mother once more and know that they are happy and awaiting your return. Is it not?"_

_"Yes," I said in a small voice. He was right. All the pain, all the evils I have suffered, all the horrors I had witnessed…they didn't hurt now. The wounds were closed and healed, because they were only fleeting pains of the mortal world after all. And as I looked into Poppa's eyes, and saw the faces of all those who had hurt me through the perfect Truth of his perception, I saw that they were so sad, so pitiful, so lost, because they didn't understand. They didn't know any better._

_All of them except Vegita._

_He had begun to understand, to learn a better way. And…and I had killed him. I had destroyed him first, crushed his heart, his hope, his everything. Then I had left him to die. I began crying and Poppa held me. "Where is he?!" I sobbed. "Is he in Hell?"_

_"No," said Poppa, brushing the tears from my face. "And you have my promise that you will see him again. Though what you do when you meet again is your choice."_

_"It's time to go, Momma," Rom-kun said. He climbed onto the bed and took my hand. The other little boy hung back, still shy. Poppa lifted him and set him in my arms. The little boy smiled up at me, eyes blue as my own, happy simply to be held by me, and I felt a rush of recognition and absolute love flow through me. "My baby," I whispered._

_Poppa kissed my forehead. "Time to go. Remember what you saw and understood here, daughter. It will help you see the best path to chose and give you the strength to do what you must."_

_I stared up at him and smiled. "You're not really my father, are you?"_

_And he smiled back. "I'm everyone's father, Bulma-chan."_

_I woke._

_With Rom-kun still holding my hand. With Bardock and Nail kneeling beside me. With the warm, sweet weight of my new baby heavy in my arms._

_They made me lay down. I wasn't tired, but I let them put me to bed anyway. I have Baby Trunks here with me in one arm, and Rom-kun curled up beside me._

_I'm going to end this diary now. I'll start a new one. One that begins with the first day of Trunks' life. A diary full of happy memories. I don't know where we are or what will happen tomorrow, but right now, I am happy._

_I am so happy!_

She finally spoke into the silence that followed. "I would have been lost, broken beyond repair, Vegita. If I hadn't been taken to that better place. But I kissed my Momma again. I talked with Scopa. I held my Karot-chan in my arms again. And when I woke…I found that I'd brought a piece of that summer land back with me. Or maybe I just understand everything better now. More than people who've only seen the mortal world. That death is an illusion. That evil is illness, a misunderstanding of what is real and what matters. I came back healed, Vegita. More than that…I came back without hate, and all the pain I knew on Vegita-sei is like a dream now. So…so, I want you to stay. I want you near. And…and then we'll see." She lay her hand against his cheek and he turned his face and kissed the inside of her palm, his entire body shaking. He took her in his arms and kissed her, slowly, savoring her as though she might fade into smoke at any second. This could not be real.

But she was real and she was well and she was near. Whatever came next, whether they would be friends or lovers, he would abide by her decision and thank the gods for every breath he breathed in her presence. But now she was regarding him curiously as he held her close. He waited to see what she would say. "You are so different," she said. "As different as when you woke in Bardock's house."

He studied her. "You have changed as well. We…we are almost strangers to each other now. I think we will have to come to know each other again."

And she smiled like the sun dawning on a new day. "I'd like that."

**END**

_If all of the strength  
And all of the courage  
Come and lift me from this place,  
I know I can love you much better than this.  
Full of grace,  
My love…_

_-Sarah Maclachlan_


End file.
